- Anti-Climax Boss: Red takes down the Children of the New Dawn pretty easily. Brother Klopek is the only one who puts up a fight. Justified in that they are a cult of drugged-up hippies who had to summon demonic forces to do the dirty work for them.
- Awesome Music:
- Jóhann Jóhannsson's score (one of the last he composed before his death) has been roundly praised and does an excellent job elevating the movie's visuals into something far greater.
- The film also opens with King Crimson's "Starless," which is another great example of this.
- Despite the lyrics being intentionally awful, Jeremiah Sand's song "The Amulet of the Weeping Maze" is actually a pretty nice song.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Some might argue that the whole film is an unbroken stream of BLAMs — but the most deliberately absurd has to be Red, wounded and traumatized, wandering into his house to find the TV left on and being confronted by a bizarre macaroni-and-cheese commercialnote involving a mascot called the Cheddar Goblin literally vomiting streams of pasta all over two kids.
- Catharsis Factor: It's hard to think of a more satisfying end than Red literally squeezing Jeremiah's skull into mush as the slimy little bastard pleads for his life.
- Complete Monster: Jeremiah Sand is the vicious, cowardly leader of the Children of the New Dawn cult. Having murdered his parents and moved to Los Angeles to indulge in music and drugs, Jeremiah would form countless cults centered around himself to satisfy his narcissism. Working with the demonic Black Skulls biker gang, he makes them his personal attack dogs and allows them to murder and rape whomever they please, holding their chemist hostage to help continue their murder sprees. Taking an obsessive liking to Mandy Bloom, he has the Black Skulls kidnap her and her husband Red Miller, sacrificing one of his men to them as thanks. With the couple in hand, he has Mandy drugged and tries to rape her, while he has Red hung up with barb wire and stabbed in the side, and is Forced to Watch Mandy burned alive after she tarnishes Jeremiah's ego by laughing at him.
- Critical Dissonance: A mild case; the film has garnered critical acclaim but a more mixed reaction among audiences, likely due to its use of Surreal Horror and a slow first half.
- Cult Classic: A trippy, hyper-violent, indie flick starring Nic Cage that went relatively under the radar in 2018; it's definitely on its way towards becoming one.
- Evil Is Cool: Very much averted with Jeremiah Sand and the Children of the New Dawn, overall. But the Black Skulls? How can you get much cooler than demonic bikers?
- He Really Can Act: Critics have praised this film for allowing Nicolas Cage to give a very powerful performance and show off his range.
- Heartwarming Moments:
- Red and Mandy lying in bed together, having an adorkable chat about anything that comes immediately to their minds. The two have such great chemistry together, it's almost enough to make you sad on a rewatch knowing what's to come. It's also set to this lovely piece by Johann Johannsson
. - There's something to be said about Red continuing to be a relatively good person despite being a raging Blood Knight killing everybody who was responsible for Mandy's kidnapping and subsequent death, even after he takes a dose of the Chemist's LSD. He convinces the Chemist to release the tiger he'd been using to test his drugs, and later allows Sister Lucy to leave unscathed after he kills Brother Swann in front of her. He may no longer be physically or spiritually human, but he has not lost his humanity.
- While also a Tear Jerker and Nightmare Fuel to some extent, after finishing off the Children of the New Dawn, Red gets in his car and sees a vision of when he first met Mandy, wearing the "44" t-shirt and smiling at him. He smiles back, and while it looks unnerving, and despite his vengeance feeling unsatisfactory, he at least seems to have found some measure of contentment, even if it is just with a hallucination.
- Red and Mandy lying in bed together, having an adorkable chat about anything that comes immediately to their minds. The two have such great chemistry together, it's almost enough to make you sad on a rewatch knowing what's to come. It's also set to this lovely piece by Johann Johannsson
- Ho Yay: Jeremiah and Brother Swann seem close. Real close. It doesn't help that Jeremiah later offers to suck Red's dick.
- Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of people watched this movie just to see NICOLAS CAGE IN A CHAINSAW FIGHT.
- Narm Charm: Considering it stars Nic Cage, the interplay between unintentional hilarity and genuine effectiveness is almost inevitable.
- The image of a middle-aged man in a cartoon tiger T-shirt, tighty whities and tube socks sloppily drinking while screaming his head off in a bathroom sounds absolutely ridiculous on paper, and considering said man is Cage, it sounds like just another one of the hilarious Freak Out moments he's known for. But considering he's just been tortured and forced to watch his wife burn alive by the cult, all of his emotions are justified, and the scene is genuinely devastating.
- Red referring to Jeremiah's cult and the Black Skulls as "weirdo, hippie types" and "gnarly psychos... crazy evil", respectively. Then again, coming from Cage, it actually works.
- The second half of the film, when all bets are off, is extremely over the top. However, the build-up, along with the Catharsis Factor and quality, make it extremely entertaining.
- This image◊ of Red following his Roaring Rampage of Revenge is either unintentionally hilarious or downright terrifying. Or, as it's Cage, a weird mix of both.
- Jeremiah Sand's song "The Amulet of the Weeping Maze" is hilariously awful but also pretty nice at the same time.
- One-Scene Wonder:
- Richard Brake as The Chemist.
- Also the legendary Bill Duke as Red's friend Caruthers, getting some of the best lines in the movie.Caruthers: Whatcha hunting?
Red: Jesus freaks.
Caruthers: Didn't know they were in season.
- Realism-Induced Horror: There's quite a bit regarding Jeremiah Sand. When you put aside the ambiguously fantastical elements to his character, people like him exist in real life. He's clearly heavily inspired by Charles Manson and any other number of New Age and quasi-Christian cult leaders who start their movements for no other reason to satisfy their own egos, taking advantage of their impressionable followers and abusing them verbally, physically, psychologically, and sexually on a whim. Additionally, his misogynistic attitude towards his female followers — and later towards Mandy — is disturbingly similar to that of the incel movement, believing himself to be entitled to have sex with women, giving himself permission to rape them but being homicidally enraged when they reject his advances.
- Signature Scene:
- Unsurprisingly, the chainsaw duel has been described as an undeniable highlight of the movie and it's hard to find a critic's review that doesn't mention it. It's even featured on at least one of the movie's posters.
- Red's screaming, roaring, sobbing breakdown in the bathroom after Mandy dies, the emotional high point of the movie and a true showcase for Nic Cage's true acting skills.
- Slow-Paced Beginning: The first hour of the movie mostly focuses on Mandy's romance with Red and Jeremiah Sand's plot to kidnap her.
- Spiritual Adaptation:
- With surreal religious imagery, demonic mooks, over-the-top violence, and highly saturated colors, this might be the closest Western live-action adaptation of Go Nagai's Devilman series. Perhaps better than the actual live-action Devilman adaptation.
- The movie is also like a more stylish version of I Saw the Devil, albeit far more formalist and more surreal.
- Squick:
- Jeremiah's description of the initiation ceremony that he put his followers in Live To Tell through. It requires the initiate to bite the head off a live grasshopper, then draw their own blood, which the rest of the members would drink.
- When Red crushes Sand's head, we see the whole thing too. His eye even pops out!
- Ugly Cute: The Cheddar Goblin.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Ronald Reagan is playing on the radio in Red's car as he drives home, criticising pornography and abortion. Red turns him off in distaste. The film can be seen as a condemnation of Reagan policies that were perceived by some as Puritanical, overly stringent and driving young people into the arms of depraved hippy cults like the Manson Family that were active in the 80s — essentially real-life Children of the New Dawn. The fact that at one point Red calls one of the villains a "snowflake", a contemporary term used by rightists to describe far-leftists (and by the far-right to describe anyone to the left of them) can also be taken as this.
- The Woobie:
- Lucy, as the sole member of the Children of the New Dawn who isn't thoroughly despicable. She is repeatedly raped by Jeremiah, almost forced to shoot herself in front of Red to prove her devotion, and sheds tears when she sees Brother Swann brutally killed. Red spares her and lets her go free, seemingly understanding that she's as much a victim of the cult as he and Mandy.
- Mandy. Despite the implied abuse that her father put her through, she seems to be a kind-hearted individual, which makes her abduction and death at the hands of Jeremiah and his cult that much more tragic.
- Red. Prior to the events of the movie, Word of God says he was a violent man who settled down when he met Mandy. Her death drove him over the edge again.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/Mandy2018
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