To be fair, it doesn’t come across as that bad, considering they live in a postapocalyptic society. Nicolas Cage never has to go all Cage-ragey even once, even as he plays a dad of two teenage boys living in post collapse Arcadia. Their little cottage has it all books, chess, a dog, and warm evenings with a crackling fire. Alright, fine, I’ll accept that there is Something Unfathomable that comes knocking on their doors in the dead of the night, but it is nowhere close to being perfect, right?
Listen, I’m trying to learn how to accept representations of life in the future, where modern-day civilization has collapsed because from what I can see, it’s where we are going (that is the hope). And at least this one from director Benjamin Brewer and writer Mike Nilon is not pessimistic about how The Kids Are All Right, or at least they will be okay. Perhaps Cage and I, and our fellow GenXers aren’t made for the future, but the children will be children of the future. Hopefully the best case scenario.
Arcadian does not stand out that much from the large subgenre to which it belongs, but it has a good structure and a few unique features that are pleasing and effective. There is quite a huge difference between the teenage boys: the studious home masseuse Joseph (Jaeden Martell: Knives Out, It: Chapter Two) and the troublesome rogue Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins) and both evoke a soft, lavish love in Cage’s Paul; Honestly speaking, Cage (Dream Scenario, Sympathy for the Devil) is much more interesting when he enjoys being a normal human rather than being a flamboyant caricature. And I’m so happy that the movie avoids some very predictable clichés: we notice, in the prologue of the movie, how the boys don’t even biologically belong to Paul as their biological father, but are infants abandoned – possibly by intention but more probably by accident – whom he saves during the very early stages of the unraveling. Usually, I was anticipating a scene of “You’re not my real dad” but the point of father versus sons arrives rather later in the movie, and that scene never occurs.
Other smaller good things are the reactions of the boys and their little neighbor Charlotte (Sadie Soverall) all who are behind the darkness being shielded for their own good, why I see them; they have remained indoors after dark due to the evils that emerge with the moon. And also, the lovely game that Thomas and Charlotte engage in where they fabricate reasons as to how their universe came to be: I remember the characters of a movie about the post-apocalypse scenario that I do not understand everything about their nightmares or how they emerged and the mystery is treated as an active point of interest. Not knowing, it seems, is the very norm when entire networks and interaction are wiped out and this creates a rather disordered view of the world as the movie depicts . It meshes well with watching the creation of myths and legends of a new culture as it is unfolding.
Most notably, Arcadian features one of the most terrifying sequences I’ve witnessed on screen in a very long time, and believe me, it takes a great deal to frighten me. I held my breath. I clenched my fists. I almost let out a scream from the tension and the fright of it all. It involves the creatures. The creatures who come walking at night. The creatures who may or may not have contributed to the downfall of civilization or who may be its very end. Brewer avoids showing the creatures for a long time, only showing a drip, drip, drip of them over a period of time which eventually culminates in us being shown some very disturbing imagery that makes it clear how terribly wrong all of this is. It is horrifying in a one of kind way which dead justify the idea of humanity messing up planet earth so badly to a point where this is how it is needed to be sustained.
For more movies LIKE Arcadian visit 123Movies.