The first full trailer for the new Nicolas Cage movie Prisoners of the Ghostland is here and it features a bold proclamation from the star himself. In the trailer, Cage is quoted as saying Ghostland is “The wildest movie I’ve ever made.” Which, coming from someone with a resume like Cage, is saying something. But considering it’s a film about a criminal forced to wear a bomb suit and go into a wasteland to rescue the granddaughter of a crime boss from a bunch of mysterious nomad ghost people — sure, it’s pretty wild.
Directed by Sion Sono (Love Exposure, Cold Fish, Tokyo Tribe), Prisoners of the Ghostland will be released in theatres and on VOD September 17. It co-stars Bill Moseley and Sofia Boutella, and here’s the trailer.
So the trailer pretty much says it all, but here’s what you just watched. The movie is set in a place called Samurai Town, where Cage is a bank robber imprisoned after a job goes horribly wrong. However, when the granddaughter (Boutella) of the town’s warlord (Moseley) goes missing, the warlord offers the robber a deal. Put on this explosive suit and head into the wastelands and retrieve her, or else. He does, of course, and what he finds is not at all what anyone is expecting.
Prisoners of the Ghostland debuted at this year’s virtual Sundance Film Festival before being picked up by RLJE Films. We watched it and, frankly, found the wildness to be a bit too much. The movie just kind of never comes together and feels hugely disjointed. At least that was my opinion. You can read the full review here. But, as you can see in the trailer, plenty of people who aren’t the stars of the movie enjoyed it quite a bit.
Lots of critics from other sites heaped praise on the unique film and hey, I’d rather watch something that takes a huge risk like Prisoners of the Ghostland than another remake of a movie that wasn’t good in the first place, or a franchise reboot prequel that never gets off the ground. So even just in that aspect, it’s pretty darn wild.
Again, the film opens in select theatres and on VOD September 17.