Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)
I’m not going to pretend like I knew who Sion Sono is before watching Prisoners of the Ghostland, his first English-language film. I have watched the odd Japanese film here and there, such as the atrocious Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice, but I am far from an expert.
I was excited to watch Prisoners of the Ghostland as part of my Nicolas Cage journey. The post-apocalyptic Japan mashed together with Wild West elements is totally my jam (Red Steel 2, anyone?). It looks like Japanese Mad Max, and I am always down to watch a film that evokes Mad Max visuals.
Sadly, Prisoners of the Ghostland landed so terribly with my friends that it’s become the name of our voice chat channel in Discord as an in-joke. The film runs at 103 minutes, but it easily feels fifty percent longer. There is little action to speak of for the vast majority of the runtime, and some of the more psychedelic scenes are just confusing.
Prisoners of the Ghostland had its moments. Cage’s character, Hero, is forced to atone for his crimes by rescuing the Governor’s (Bill Moseley) granddaughter, Bernice (Sophia Boutella). To ensure no harm comes to her and that Hero actually attempts the mission, he is forced to wear a black leather jumpsuit fitted with explosives on his throat, neck, and, naturally, testicles. I was laughing so hard at Hero choosing to ride off on a bicycle instead of the car provided to him for his journey that I had to watch it again as soon as I finished the film. Watching up to that one scene, you might think the film is really going somewhere. “So cool.” Cage once again carrying a film on his back.
From there, it’s a slog. The ghostland itself is a hellscape. Bernice’s name called to mind Dante’s “Beatrice” when I was thinking about the concept of the ghostland being a sort of afterlife. Everyone in the ghostland is a prisoner in some way. The ghostland is a hellish purgatory, and the only escape is death.
Hero quickly locates Bernice, but her mind is fractured. She can no longer speak, and her voice is the only way for Hero to confirm she is alive, preventing the suit from automatically detonating at the end of his timeline. Hero employs several tactics to try and jog her memory. When things go awry, Hero experiences his own flashback of his prior role in the ghostland. It should have been an interesting piece of exposition, but it’s just a replay of things already shown, with a few details added. There had to be a better way to handle it.
While I was let down by Prisoners of the Ghostland, I feel that perhaps there is something I’m missing. Would there have been more to understand if I were already familiar with Sono? I can’t shake the feeling that I missed something. The film has things going for it, but it comes together poorly in a way that nonetheless feels deliberate. There was clearly a well-constructed vision that simply suffered from execution flaws. Eventually, I will watch more Sono films, and perhaps I’ll return for another incarceration in the ghostland.
TL;DR: Was it boring, or am I just uneducated? It’s boring now, but perhaps there is a devil in the details. 2/5
