Nicolas Cage claims he’s close to retirement, so as his career supposedly winds down, I would really like him to go out on a high note. that means no more random shit like The old Way and The retirement Plan. So, the question here is Arcadian worthy of being one of Nicolas Cage’s final films? Well, that depends on how you look at it.
He isn’t really the star of the film.That’s not meant to be a spoiler, it’s just how the movie is really structured. We are in a dystopian future where a lot of humans are now dead, likely due to war and climate change, and the few remaining are hiding from the “monsters”. This is a Shudder release that may or may not have good visual effects. I’m a blind film critic, so all I got was in the audio description.
The real stars are Maxwell Jenkins and Jaeden Martell, who play the progeny of Cage, who get fatherly advice passed along, and eventually are the ones to really take over the story.Again, this doesn’t mean something happens to Cage, it just is how the story is structured. there is another family that exists, who have a daughter, that one of the boys is in this secret relationship with. However, there are these alien monster things that attack. I’ll be honest and say I didn’t like the audio description. It seemed as though the monsters were different sizes, but we were never given size relativity, so when we hear a regular monster, and then later another is labeled as big or large, how much? In comparison to what? I wasn’t even fully sure what these things looked like, and on top of that, the descritpion of violence in the track wasn’t great. this is a Shudder title, so fans are looking for scares and/or gore. There was one effective scene where the daughter is headed into the bathroom, but I never felt any tension.
I mostly picked up what the film was trying to put down, but the Audio Eyes audio description, narrated by Rick Boggs, and written by Micah Grossman is underwhelming.If you don’t want to go all in on a horror film, then don’t take the gig.
Luckily for the film, Maxwell Jenkins and Jaeden Martell are really talented up and coming actors who really do a lot, and cage is good in a supporting role. So, watch it for the cast, and the somewhat interesting, slightly derivative plot.
Final Grade: B-
