The world has ended (for unclear reasons), and life goes on (for all the usual human-motivated reasons) as Nic Cage raises two teenage boys on the verge of manhood. It’s a world where doors must be bolted and windows shuttered after sundown, no matter how powerful the romantic lures of the nearby Rose Farm are to Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins) or how tiresome it all is to thoughtful genius Joseph (Jaeden Martell). Arcadian opens in a bleak apocalypse, which soon gives way to a kind of survivalist cosy catastrophe, but one with an ever-present lurking sense of threat, which feels all the more menacing for seeing the fragile human community which could be destroyed.
It’s nice to see Cage playing the kind, if strict, dad role, which seems to come naturally to him, although if you only want to see him in films where he is ‘doing a Nic Cage’ you will be disappointed. But really, this film belongs to the teen leads, who are engaging and likeable almost in spite of themselves since they spend a good chunk of the run time being… well, teenage boys (and we all know how annoying they can be).
Sadly, the slow build of tension and the unseen sense of menace is aggressively jettisoned out of the nearest window as soon as the menace is fully seen, and what was a slow burn contemplation of life after the end of everything becomes something a lot more akin to Tremors 2, but without the laughs (no shade on Tremors 2 intended, but they are very different films). In spite of the pivot, this is still a nice post-apocalypse to visit, but we definitely wouldn’t want to stay forever.
ARCADIAN is in US cinemas now.
