Arcadian (2024)

April 14, 2024 8:16 AM

[TRAILER] In a near future, life on Earth has been decimated. Paul (Nicolas Cage) and his twin teenage sons (Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins) find tranquility by day but terror by night when ferocious creatures awaken and consume all living souls in their path. Faced with an impossible situation, the boys come up with a desperate plan for survival, using everything their father taught them to keep him alive.

Alsdo starring Sadie Soverall, Samantha Coughlan, Joel Gillman.

Directed by Ben Brewer. Written by Michael Nilon. Produced by Michael Nilon, David Wulf, Arianne Fraser, Delphine Perrier, Braxton Pope, Nicolas Cage for
Saturn Films/Redline Entertainment/Highland Film Group. Cinematography by Frank Mobilio. Edited by Kristi Shimek. Music by Kristin Kontrol (of the band Dum Dum Girls), Josh Martin (who records under the name Daughn Gibson).

85% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Now playing in select US theaters. JustWatch listing.

posted by DirtyOldTown (4 comments total)

Maybe the most surprising thing about this movie is that, despite its film festival accolades, despite having Nic Cage as a star/producer, and despite being released in an era where nearly all heralded indie films seem to be parables about grief or metaphors about the declining state of the world... well, despite all of that, this is a well-acted and paced story about the inevitability of letting your kids go.

The handheld cameras didn't seem to fit the vibe of the movie that well, but I got used to them. I don't know the Dum Dum, Girls or Daughn Gibson, but the music is excellent. Cage really seems to have done this role more as a way of helping this good film get made than for anything in particular he gets to do as Paul. He's not even in the second act, really.I'd like to see Sadie Soverall in another role as she doesn't get a ton to do here (though the movie sort of exists from the brothers' POV and makes a point of demonstrating that they underestimate her as well). She's got a great face, though, highly expressive, and she quietly steals many of the scenes she's in.

Solid and enjoyable movie. Not so much an original or ambitious mind-blower as a good film that knows its turf and works it well.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:24 AM on April 14 [4 favorites]

I was very impressed by the creature design because DAMN. I will say it's a movie I had to brighten, which is a problem I've had with a lot of horror movies in the last decade. Filmmakers, please try to restrain your desire to make your lighting design a bit better than so dark I can't see what the hell is going on. Because that doesn't scare me, it just annoys me.

But yes a solid enjoyable film about letting your kids go in a dangerous world.
posted by miss-lapin at 8:37 PM on July 15 [2 favorites]

Yeah, the monster design is some of the best in recent memory.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:38 PM on July 15 [1 favorite]

Just caught this on Shudder (Canada) and really enjoyed it. I've kind of shifted to thinking of horror movies as needing two opinions: story and vibes, because a lot of my faves are high on one and low on the other, but definitely aren't mediocre, they just invest more in plot, or vibes.

This was pretty solid for story and vibes!

Story: Solid! Serviceable! Didn't try to do to much, the characters made sense, it gets from Point A to Point B without any nonsense. The one thing I really didn't get -- and I was momentarily distracted by cats, so I might have missed 15 crucial seconds at some point -- was that there's the Cage farm (Cage, two boys) and one of the boys visits the Rose farm (Presumably Mr. and Mrs. Rose, and Daughter Rose).

Then, after Young Cage is given some drugs by Young Rose for his ailing father, there are suddenly, like, eight people who also live on the farm, and more or less act like carnies? Were they hanging around before and I suddenly missed them? Is there a great reason that the Rose farm has an Extra Barn of Roughshod Dudes who apparently all bunk together and are into torture?

Vibes: fantastic! Great Woods Horror in the twilight scenes, loved the goofy-creepy monster design and the ratatatat mouth action. Peephole scene was top notch, and the "they've been burying under both farms for a mass assault" scene was really effective. The family stuff felt lived-in and true; Cage was great dialling it down to 4 as a father, the brothers felt really believable.

Really liked it, on the whole.
posted by Shepherd at 5:00 PM on July 26 [2 favorites]