A Quiet Cage: the Arcadian reception

Go what title your friendly neighborhood Terrence came up with.
At least three reading levels:

Why this Arcadian and a little’ A Quiet Place but with fewer rules
Because our Nic Cage here is unusually calm
Because in this film there is more than one cage

THEME SONG!

It’s not the first time that Cage and director Benjamin Brewer have met. Brewer had previously co-directed it with his brother Alex in The Trust, where two lame Las Vegas cops improvise as robbers and have the face of Cage, in fact, and of an Elijah Wood who does pot. The good Casanova Wong Kar-Wai told you about it at the time.

This time, however, Brewer wants Cage for a survival adventure with mysterious creatures, a bit survival horror and a bit monster movie, like A Quiet Placeexactly, but also a bit like The Last of Us, so we don’t miss anything. We might as well have mentioned these two titles right away, right? I mean, how can you watch a film like this in 2024 Arcadian without letting them come to mind? There is a whole atmosphere of a world population decimated for some unspecified reason, we move through bucolic landscapes that hide bestial dangers and post-apocalyptic campaigns, nature is once again the enemy and humanity must start from the fundamentals to to survive. It must be said though Arcadiandespite living in the shadow of its two bigger brothers in terms of production and distribution, still manages to carve out a space of its own.

«I will find it, a space of my own»

It’s the story of a father who in our world would help his children with their homework, would be advised not to do wheelies on their scooter and would perhaps get a little angry after a conversation with the teachers. Unfortunately, however, this father, Cage, does not live in our world but in that of Arcadian, so the level of his parental role from “basic” suddenly becomes “doing everything to protect and save the lives of your children”. But he doesn’t become John Rambo. The interesting thing about Arcadian it’s that it shows us characters who really seem to be suddenly catapulted into that world. The relationship between Cage and his children, who have the faces of the excellent Jaeden Martell and Maxwell Jenkins, is told through understandable arguments while they are at the table and are having dinner with what they have managed to make up for, moments in which the father gives them school lessons guides or teaches him how to build or fix a certain thing. At the beginning of the film it is revealed to us that the two boys were born in that world, so the father does everything not only to help them and give them all the necessary tools, but also to keep alive the memory of what it was like world before the catastrophe, a world that only he knows. In this way we are ready to believe it when, in one of the best scenes, one of the sons builds a trap for monsters and even manages to capture one.

«Ok, now put the NOS»

In my opinion, this little film plays its best cards in the narration of human relationships. It’s constantly peppered with moments where okay, there are monsters and the apocalypse, but they’re still the characters so they’ll definitely do some shit. My favorite moment is when Arcadian tells us that in a teenager the desire to make out will always be stronger than the fear of monsters, but if in our world fathers usually punish their children for disobeying their rules, in this case when they find them again they hug them very tightly because despite the their imprudence are still alive.

“So, how was it in the clearing today?”

And in all this, what are these creatures like? Oh, friends, with all the budget limitations, I applaud Brewer and his team because I haven’t seen monsters with such an imaginative and disconcerting design in a while (Ishana Shyamalan take notes). When we first talked about this film on Twitch, the boss mentioned a review in which these monsters were compared to “space hippos”. Now that I’ve seen the film I think I understand, I think it was referring to the strange noise they make and their particular jaw and jaw opening, I repeat: I THINK I understand; but I still keep wondering what the reviewer was smoking to see a space hippopotamus in something like this:

But not in Futurama

If you ask me, these creatures deserve a separate study in our Monsterology column. For now I’ll just tell you that in a recent interview for IGN Brewer said that one of the inspirations for their appearance was… Goofy. I’m not joking, really that Foo. In particular: you know at the beginning of Traveling with Goofy Max’s nightmare about turning into his father? Well, according to Brewer, it was precisely that hallucinating segment that inspired him. Needless to say, I love this guy.

Creature sketches by Benjamin Brewer

So, to recap: there are fewer rules in Arcadian respect that in A Quiet Placeit’s not that these creatures have any particular characteristics like blindness so you mustn’t make any noise otherwise… no, no, here you mustn’t make any noise, you mustn’t be seen, you must barricade yourself in your house as much as possible so if at a certain point you return the favor by building a cage it’s more than understandable. And as mentioned our Nic Cage is calm, peaceful, thoughtful and wise all the time, the typical excesses that we of 400 Kicks love so much are kept under control, if we leave out a little moment in the finale where I felt like I was inside With Air and my heart was pounding.

I hope to see both Brewer and his space peeps again soon.

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