Reviews by:
@culturevulture221
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It’s just weird, and not in a good way at all.
It’s comprised of crammed ideas and confusing creative decisions. There’s no passion here, and everything is way too poorly executed to make me think otherwise. The bulk of the film is comprised of poorly descriptive world building, an incoherent narrative, and lifelessly cliched characters.
I can easily appreciate a weird film if there’s a purpose or any substance behind it’s decisions, but I couldn’t notice any element that went deeper than surface level or at least was decently executed. Watching these dumb things was fun, but the show can only really entertain by belittling itself through its bizarreness.
Trying to be positive, the fight scenes were executed with a refreshing edge and there were a few good moments of entertainment.
Negative: World Building
The world is poorly captured and expanded on in nearly every way. First off, the movie never gives the audience a moment to absorb or appreciate the world.
Something always has to be happening, it’s like it wants to constantly keep the audience engaged but it’s this repetitiveness that ends up killing any interest in the world. As the narrative moves locations and leads into a character standoff which then builds into more character standoffs, our perception of the world doesn’t deepen.
Rather, it stretches itself too thin with uninteresting ideas while wasting too much time on narrative exposition and not enough time deepening the lore of the world.
This wouldn’t be as much of a problem, but this movie seems like it wants to be the next Mad Max. It had boisterous characters, a conflict between two groups and an apocalyptic wasteland that only cars can traverse. But, where Mad Max provides meaning within its conciseness, Prisoners of the Ghostland just seems confused with what kind of world it wants to have and tries to hide it with a lot of personality. But precision is important, and due to Prisoners of the Ghostland unrefined nature, it ends up making the audience ask questions about the world which it never had answers to.
I didn’t understand the worlds scope once, what we’re shown by the cinematography (a few of the same repeating narrow alleyways) doesn’t reflect what it’s trying to be (a city which is ruled by an overlord and has a monopoly over this world). The outcasts place also is pretty poorly defined, there’s a main plaza and a car repair place but there’s no sub sections and it feels very basic for what should be a camp filled with suffering people. Also, outside of these two places we know nothing about the world, it seems like nothing else exists but at the same time the movie alludes to the possibility. There’s a prison transport which moves from the city to somewhere else, but we have (and previously before this had) no idea that there were other places in this world so it’s new and important information but it’s never acknowledged. I’m not asking for Star Wars, I’m asking for roughly defined borders or just a
sense of consistency so the world has some logic to ground itself in. It a show can’t define the scope of whats happening, it’s usually a bad omen for everything else that follows.
Negative: Narrative/Characterization
The precession of events is very rough. Any potential for the developing sub plots is sapped by poor placement within the plot structure. Nic Cage has a past which haunts him and the regret he feels is constantly alluded to by us seeing snippets of what happened. The unveiling of his past is tied into the present, its a balance that lets us into the internal conflict of Nic Cage gradually while building up to its significance in the plot. Until, this stops being the case and his whole backstory is shown at once. There’s still an hour left of this movie and not only do we know everything about his situation, but his character arc gets concluded. He is given closure and moves on, unfortunately this means that any intrigue that was being built up was cut short and his place in the film no longer feels personal. It also interferes with the main plot, the 10 minute backstory has a lot going on so it distracts from what the main plot line is trying to deliver. When we come back to the present, it just feels disorienting.
Also, Yasujiro had good potential as a cool character forced to work under the bad guy for the protection of his sister. He has the cool presence, the sympathetic backstory, and the internal conflict of being forced to do the bad guy work. Unfortunately, this character arc is so inconceivably rushed that all the good ideas are squashed underneath a relentlessly fast pace. It’s hard to appreciate anything about him when it’s over too quickly, not really being given time to meditate with the character results in an aura of mystery that isn’t created out of good writing, but rather a lack of understanding of anything about him. The narrative doesn’t make any time for him and his character is nothing more than a
cool facade as a result.
Also, I’m not done talking about Nic Cage’s character. It feels like his character was made to embody the weirdness that he’s known for channeling in performances, but at the same it doesn’t go far enough while also never providing something interesting underneath this. Nic Cage will do some weird
things, but for a lot of this movie he’s silent and it kills the potential for any dynamics with any other characters. Him and the bad cowboy guy could’ve had a fun back and forth which would’ve made the exposition dump at the start of the movie more bearable, no. Him and Bernice could’ve had a heartwarming dynamic where they began to talk and open up to each other more as they
became more comfortable around each other, no. Him and Yasujiro could’ve had more going on than just a staring contest, no. He isn’t completely silent, but even when he talks his dialogue feels pretty meaningless since it doesn’t progress the plot or bridge connections with characters, it just states the obvious. Also, the weird bits are just jokes with no consequences that say nothing deeper to the
character. Why does Nic Cage start riding a bicycle into the wasteland instead of the car he was provided? I don’t know. Why do we watch his left nut explode? I don’t know because it didn’t play a factor in the rest of the film. Why does he act all proud when he takes his underwear off in front of some very impressed women and one begins to draw him naked? I DONT KNOW BECAUSE THIS COCKINESS (ha) IS NOT PART OF HIS CHARACTER IN ANY OTHER SCENE. I’m gonna lose ThePlokoonyReview posture if I talk about this character anymore, I’m gonna move on this is one of the most inconsistent and horribly defined characters ever thank you.
Bernice ranged from being silent to being unexpressive and the straightforward performance from her actress made it hard to see this portrayal as anything else other than bad characterization. The bad cowboy guy is barley worth talking about, he has a lot of stylistic personality but this just ends up looking like compensation for the lack of an interesting (or even slightly developed) personality. We know he’s a bad guy, but we’re given no understanding of what he’s done that makes him bad, his backstory with Bernice and Susie (kinda like sus) goes completely unexplored. This movie is given a lot of opportunities to make the audience hate the bad guy, or even make him sympathetic with just
some exploration into any of his motives or relationships. But it doesn’t develop (or even properly introduce it just appears at some point) a single one and leaves him as a husk who says one liners and has cowboy stereotypes. Speaking of which, the culture fusion of Traditional Japanese and American Cowboys is more annoying rather than creative. It’s already frustrating since it’s just two different pre existing cultures mashed together so creativity or an original idea wasn’t very present, rather it’s just copying. But it never goes acknowledged either, having this in the background just begs questions and the film never seems to be interested in providing that knowledge.
In the review, I didn’t acknowledge cinematography, editing, music, or anything in that vein because there’s barely anything to talk about. The core problems end up residing within its world, narrative, and characters and when a films flaws are so heavily internalized within the foundations of the film, nothing can really save it.
I liked the fight scenes, the ending of the movie had more of a mellow tone which I appreciated but these small positives are too minor to make up for the rest of the experience.
Enjoyment rating: 3.5/10
Critical rating: 2/10
Final rating: 2.5/10
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