Prisoners of the Ghostland and the Pursuit of a Better Tomorrow

The marketing team for Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021) must have been thrilled when they got word that Nichloas Cage referred to their movie as the wildest one of his career. Slapping that quote all over the posters was a stroke of genius, and considering the source, it acts as a near promise for one hell of a ride. This is the balls-to-wall Nic Cage we’re talking about after all, from such memorably bonkers flicks like Vampire’s Kiss (1989) and Mandy (2018), and a claim this tall from a man this intense surely sets the mood.

Which is funny because, at its core, Prisoners of the Ghostland is not that bizarre of a movie. It’s got a great style and tons of amazing visuals and I loved every second of it, but when boiled down to what’s happening, it’s much more straightforward than some other Cage vehicles. Prisoners of the Ghostland is half parable, half example of what we could be doing; the type of art we could be making. It’s also a fractured reflection of the world at large, and how trapped we become in roles we may find ourselves in accidentally.

Cage’s character, aptly named Hero, is a known criminal who’s been sitting in prison for years and years following a bank robbery gone wrong. The increasingly creepy Governor (Bill Mosely) offers Hero the chance to earn his freedom if he can find the man’s favorite concubine Bernice (Sofia Boutella). She ventured outside the gates of their manicured city Samurai Town, to a no-man’s land apparently inhabited by ghosts. There’s little choice in the matter for Hero as he’s outfitted with a black leather suit that has explosives on the arms, neck, and crotch area. A control panel along his wrist counts down how much time he has to finish the job.

Outside of Samurai Town is a total wasteland, one that mimics the world inside the gates. We see strange versions of practices we know exist, from showcasing women as decorations to storytelling through song and dance, so there’s a close-to-reality feel even in the weirdest moments. After Hero finds Bernice, she convinces him there’s got to be a better plan than just returning her to the Governor, which inspires a well-choreographed and stunning finale that Jenna won’t let me spoil here. Still, in terms of plot and outcome, it’s what the audience expects. 

There’s nothing particularly wild in the movement of the action here; where the wildness comes into play is in how immaculate and interesting the built world of the film is. It’s a story about the ghosts of a country’s past, the destruction of a habitat, and how true freedom might be nearly impossible. Bernice runs away from her cushy but degrading life inside the gates just to find similar treatment outside the gates. She screams about not being a prisoner but spends a portion of the movie without a voice and being used as a literal doll for a mad artist. Hero, being offered a shot at freedom, spends his first days outside of a cell in essentially more bondage than before. In fact, just the mere act of getting aroused causes one of the explosives to go off, and if you can’t guess which one then I’m not going to tell ya’.

When inevitably both worlds are liberated, Hero and Bernice rest at a bus stop where a poster behind them reads “Make This Place Great Again.” Hero quietly muses on how Samurai Town is going to be really beautiful someday. In a film that is a collection of styles and influences, that has Shakespearean moments and Kurosawa moments on top of a Western motif, one can’t help but think this might be a nod to the world becoming smaller; to all of us pooling our cultures together into something new yet familiar. If the future of film is directors wearing their influences on their sleeves and trusting the audience to understand their inspirations, then bring on the future. Director Sion Sono has winks and nods to great movies of the past with enough of an individual twist to make each shot unique, triggering the ‘that reminds me of something’ mechanism in our heads. It’s an omage through and through but one that presents its own flavor as it gets going.

The people in charge of Samurai Town were out of touch and bent on amassing control. People dressed and acted in rigid ways. On the outside, there was a motley crew ranging from academics to artists to tongue-speaking priestesses and scrappy junkyard gangs building outrageous machinery. There was function and form in the outside world but people were still trapping themselves in one spot. Many were locked into vocations that seemed odd to an observer, like the group in charge of holding a rope to keep the hands on the clock tower from moving. When the old power structures are shaken, everyone’s lives get better; people on both sides of the gate look forward to a cleaner, happier world. We, and Hero, both know it’s not right around the corner but it’s coming, and their actions have made it possible. 

Considering the sad and polluted state on the outside and the locked-in roles within Samurai Town, it’s not hard to see the message of helping each other towards common goals. Both sides have something to offer and problems that need to be solved. When they are separated, they are stagnant. It’s only when the barriers are dropped that any meaningful change can happen. There’s a very strong environmental thread running through the film along with the idea of lives and people being interconnected, the cause and effect of living and breathing and maybe being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Within the colorful visuals and exploding testicles, there’s a moral core of how we can make things actually great for once; not ‘again’ because there is no actual ‘great again’ when we discuss the past. Prisoners of the Ghostland is excited for the world being great for the first time.

That’s not to say this movie can’t be enjoyed strictly on a visual / action-based level. There’s plenty to look at and enough movement for those among us who have no interest in morals or messages twisted up inside of live-action cartoons. But if you’re like me, and I’m going to assume you are, Prisoners of the Ghostland has a few more layers to poke through, including more than a few references to spot and an overarching idea that we as individuals are not alone. Not in the art which we see consumed and reflected over and over; not in our pain which we sometimes share without meaning to; not in our actions which ripple outward like a mushroom cloud, an important symbol in the movie. So much in Prisoners of the Ghostland plays with the notion that we’re connected in weird and various ways. Waste can’t be dumped in one area and not expected to spread, and when the quality of life increases for one group, it increases for all of us. 

Everyone’s in a cage of some making. That’s the lesson from Prisoners of the Ghostland. That and be very careful with testicles. So fragile.