Prisoners of the Ghostland

MOVIE #1,767 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 06.27.24Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 66. This got mixed reviews but it's still part of the Cageissance based on the pedigree of its director, Japanese auteur Sion Sono, a prolific and transgressive artist with dozens of credits, perhaps most notably the 2008 epic Love Exposure. Sono has been on my list of filmmakers to do a deep-dive on for awhile, but as I mentioned in the James Hong review today: these A-Z serieses trump prospective Director Focuses. There are Billion Dollar Movie-level production bumpers before Prisoners of the Ghostland starts. The colors are glaringly bright as we see a kid longingly stare at a gumball machine inside the whitest-looking bank I've ever seen. Cage, whose character is billed simply as “Hero,” comes barreling in to rob the joint, which is not very heroic if you ask me! More like “Antihero,” right Taylor Swift?...

Does he shoot the gumball kid or not? Time will (surely) tell.

We then hard-cut to the snowy exterior of a city street trapped in time (it blends elements of a Japanese society and the old American West). A group of ladies walk by other females trapped behind bars and are given a “bracelet of hope” from someone on a balcony. This trio has clearly just escaped their life of what I'm assuming is sex slavery?

Then we immediately cut to one of those girls in a post-apocalyptic setting. I can already tell this one is gonna be hell for me to do my standard plot recap style review. She screams, “I'm not a prisoner!” as we cut to the title card. Then we see this wackiness…


We see Cage (only wearing a loincloth thong lol) locked up in a basement jail being brought outside to meet someone named The Governor. Someone in the crowd says, “let me see your balls” to him. Then the Gov tells him what he's accused of…


Look, I'm not gonna be able to keep up with this. The Governor gives Cage a cool leather outfit and he gets changed into it as the whole crowd sings a goofy nursery rhyme ass song. The long and short of it is the escaped girl is Beatrice, one of this dude's sex slaves (he calls them “granddaughters”... yuck) and he’s summoning Cage to retrieve her in exchange for his freedom. The cool leather suit has bombs built into it in case he fucks up. Like with everything else, no less than fifteen minutes into this, the dynamics of this are needlessly convoluted…


There's a real batshit for the sake of batshit vibe to this one. I can get behind that, though, if the style is working and the tone is right. The Gov has the key to unlocking Cage’s magic suit on a chain around his neck. After a goofy bit involving Cage riding a little girl's bike out of the town, he ends up taking a Toyota and immediately crashing it when he tries to drive through a caravan of samurai mutant ghost freaks. He's wheeled into the Ghostland on a cart.

The design of this place is Weird with a capital W and I could see this whole endeavor being pegged as tryhard, vapid or both. But you know what? It's nice seeing Cage in a Weird movie, made by an auteur, even if this Sono’s less appreciated late style (of which, and in general, I'm talking out of my ass as someone who is wholly unfamiliar with his work). I like mutilated mannequin people chilling in smoky fields and strange interiors, is what I'm getting at...


Look, my inclination is to not attempt to continue this review in the typical Cageian manner. I think I'm just gonna roll with that impulse and not get into the weeds about making this critique function in a readerly and coherent manner (because, frankly, that seems really hard — whoever wrote the Wikipedia plot description did a very thorough job under the circumstances so check that out if you are so inclined).

A smattering of random highlights…

Cage saying “hi-fucking-ya!” …


Cage loses a testicle (OUCH!)...


This is actually a fun way to deliver exposition. Almost making a joke of delivering exposition…


(I realize that makes NO sense without the subtitles but trust me...)

Cage starting to lean into wild-eyed crazy Cage Rage in the final act…


This line read **chef’s kiss**...


You can't actually make a movie like this properly and NOT have your lead actor scream “testicle” in any other way.

Cage puts on a decrepit football helmet to do the final battle…


In closing, this movie is A LOT, but it’s definitely more fun than not fun. Yeah, good analysis right there. Awesome review. Great job.

THE VERDICT: 7 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.

Next time on The Year of Cage: one of the earliest Nicolas Cage's performances, 1984's Racing with the Moon.

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⫷ MOVIE #1,766 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,768 ⫸

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Prisoners of the Ghostland is a 2021 American horror Western film directed by Sion Sono, from a script by Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai. It stars Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, and Bill Moseley. Its plot revolves around a notorious criminal, Hero (Nicolas Cage), who is sent to rescue the governor's adopted granddaughter, who has disappeared into a dark region called Ghostland. It was released on January 31, 2021.