Movie Review ~ Arcadian

You never know quite what you’ll get when you see a Nicolas Cage film arrive in your inbox. Will it be an out-of-left-field surprise like 2021’s painfully under-rewarded Pig, or will it take the oblong shape of another 2021 offering, the untethered chaos of Prisoners of the Ghostland? I’ll be honest and say I’ve liked more Cage films than I’ve been willing to dismiss. Whatever you think of the actor’s tendency to hack away at the scenery with his pearly whites, you can never deny that the Oscar winner isn’t throwing his total commitment into the work. From Moonstruck to Colour Out of Space to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, no Cage performance is the same, and that’s what keeps him one of the most unpredictably dependable A-Listers still bouncing around everything from indies to blockbusters.

For Cage’s latest, he’s attached himself as a producer and a star for Arcadian, a family drama with a creature feature core written by his manager, Michael Nilon, and directed by Benjamin Brewer. Best known for his visual effects work on the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, Brewer reteams with Cage after 2016’s The Trust for this new tale of a father and his twin boys surviving in an unnamed post-apocalyptic land. Moving about freely during the day, they barricade the doors and windows of their humble farmhouse by night to keep out gruesome creatures that hunt in the cover of silent darkness.

In the opening moments of Arcadian, we gather that civilization is on the brink of collapse. Smoky skies leave the land in darkness, and warning sirens ring as Paul (Cage, Renfield) escapes the city on foot, stopping to retrieve two infant boys.  Fifteen years later, Paul has raised Joseph (Jaeden Martell, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone) and Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins, Joe Bell) to live a sustainable life off the land without electricity in their isolated home in the country. Nearby farms house other survivors, and Thomas has begun to visit a neighboring residence, getting closer to Charlotte (Sadie Soverall, Saltburn), the daughter of its owner, in the process.

Paul has instilled a sense of responsibility in his sons, but they are growing teens who have recognized the limitations this forcibly sheltered life has put on them. Thomas wants more freedom to explore beyond the boundaries of the woods and get more time with Charlotte, while sensitive Joseph craves the knowledge he can only get by spreading his wings. Paul senses this natural maturity but fears what it means for what dangers come out at night to feed…and he has good reason to.

You’re probably shaking your head right about now, thinking that you know how it often goes with these nighttime beasty flicks. Mostly, I agree that they tend to blend into one giant forgettable mess.  Of course, whatever idyllic routine we drop in on will soon be shattered by one wrong step, which leads to the nocturnal creatures gaining the upper hand on the prey that has eluded them for so long. Now, left vulnerable by their actions, the survivors in the area must fight back hard and draw on their limited knowledge of the ravenous monsters to preserve their already fragile existence.

Sharing a thematic similarity with modern horror winners like A Quiet Place (and its sequel) and Bird Box and Knock at the Cabin, Arcadian explores our primal instinct to survive when faced with unbelievable threats.  Brewer creates a nail-biting atmosphere and, using a delightful mixture of practical and computer-generated effects, brings an original breed of intensely scary monsters to life in all their teeth-snapping glory. Admittedly, though, for much of the film, the creatures are shown so quickly and have such a detailed design that it is almost impossible to discern their complete dimensions and methods of dispatching their target. When do you see them, though, it’s so freaky that the hairs on your neck stand up like raw spaghetti noodles.

Filmed in Ireland, cinematographer Frank Mobilio captures the beauty of its rolling green hills and the ominous forest where the fantastic beasts slumber when they aren’t hunting our cast members. These landscape shots are lush and lovely, contrasting with the chaotic handheld camera work Mobilio and Brewer seem to favor for even the simplest of set-ups. I often don’t mind this technique when it’s used correctly, but there is an overreliance on it in Arcadian to the point where you feel like you’re watching it on a roiling cruise ship while jumping up and down and shaking your head no. That led to one of the first times in recent memory when I had to close my eyes to keep the room from spinning around.

Cage may be top-billed, but young stars Jenkins and Martell handle most of the heavy lifting. Martell, who has been holding down heavy films and television shows for much of his young life, continues to grow into an actor with the inherent ability to tap into compelling vulnerability. This emotional access gives him a long runway to bring the viewer and his fellow actors along for the ride.  While hardly the fault of the actors, the romance between teens Jenkins and Soverall is the weakest part of the movie, however. The dialogue comes across as forced, an unnatural and obvious plot device that circles back later in the film.

Though Brewer (who co-wrote the slick 2023 Netflix thriller Reptile) efficiently uses his resources to keep Arcadian at a brisk pace for the first hour, the film begins to stumble both emotionally and visually in the third act as logic issues in the script starts to undermine its full potential. It’s not enough to completely derail the effectiveness of the tremendous scares (and there is one silent sequence involving Martell and an intruding appendage that will have you screaming), but it dims a light that was headed toward blazing a brighter trail forward.

Transcending the conventions of its genre and what we’ve come to expect in dystopian creature features (and maybe even Cage films in general), Arcadian is a cut above the norm. Perhaps in a future installment, Brewer and Nilon will get around to answering more significant questions on the “why” and “how” of the situation Cage found himself in at the beginning of the film, but the contained story presented here is 90 minutes of gripping entertainment. Your spine will be tingled, your thrills chilled, and expect to find the emotional journey offered in Arcadian a welcome diversion from the standard horror formula.