Nicolas Cage stars in this ho-hum mash-up of A Quiet Place and I am Legend. Cage plays Paul, who along with his sons Joseph (Jaeden Martell, who played the young James McAvoy in It) and Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins, who played the young Alan Ritchson on Reacher) spend their nights hiding in their home from monsters and their days making repairs to fortify their compound. When Thomas neglects his duties to go to a nearby farm to flirt with a girl, he winds up stuck in the woods after curfew. It’s then up to Paul to rescue him from the nocturnal beasties.
Directed by Benjamin Brewer (who previously worked with Cage on The Trust), Arcadian works in fits and starts. It’s more intriguing when it is contrasting the lifestyle of Cage and his sons with the ritzier farm community just over the hill. It’s less effective when it leans into its horror sequences as they essentially play like Night of the Living Dead with lame CGI monsters.
These creatures are probably the weakest aspect of the film. In fact, the movie works just fine when they are kept hidden in the shadows. Once we finally get a look at them, all bets are off as they are cheesy looking as all get out and poorly rendered to boot. (They look like a cross between an emaciated monkey and a duckbill platypus.) They especially look goofy when they mass and form into a giant ball that rolls around. (I guess you can add Critters 2 to the ever-growing list of movies this flick rips off.) Their lackluster appearance is especially disappointing given Brewer’s background in special effects.
Arcadian also suffers from a noticeable lack of Cage in the second half of the film. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I have to wonder if Nic had the same agent that Eric Stoltz did when he starred in Anaconda. While the movie is far from bad, it certainly loses much of its appeal once Nic is out of commission. (He only has one single line of dialogue in the second half. Scratch that. One single WORD of dialogue.) Martell and Jenkins do what they can. It’s just that the two of them are not an equitable trade-off for one Cage.
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