Highlights
- Nicolas Cage movies create a unique genre, blending horror, action, and drama seamlessly with his iconic performances.
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Arcadian
and similar horror films showcase Cage’s excellence in captivating audiences with post-apocalyptic survival elements. - From supernatural samurai westerns to grindhouse thrillers, Nicolas Cage’s versatility shines in various genres of film.
Nicolas Cage almost exists in a genre all his own. While the actor himself is more than capable of bouncing between genres – from drama to action to horror and beyond – once Nic Cage is cast in a movie, it becomes part of the actor’s lauded filmography and, as a result, immediately joins the group of films simply known as “Nic Cage movies.”
The latest film to join this esteemed group is Arcadian, a post-apocalyptic horror about a family fighting to survive on a farm 15 years after the collapse of civilization due to the arrival of a plague of deadly monsters. These monsters only emerge at night, but they’re big, deadly, and do this really creepy thing with their jaws. For viewers who saw Arcadian and want more Nic Cage excellence in their horror (or horror-adjacent) movies, these next films should do the trick.
10 Prisoners Of The Ghostland (2021)
Directed By Sion Sono
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Cast |
Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes |
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Runtime |
1h 43min |
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RT Critic Score |
61% |
Nic Cage stars in a supernatural samurai western. This entry could end right there and still have said more than enough, but Prisoners of the Ghostland has much more to it than that. Nic Cage plays Hero, a prisoner in Samurai Town, which is ruled by a man known only as Governor. Everything outside of Samurai Town has been irradiated by a nuclear waste disaster, turning it into a barren landscape known as Ghostland, inhabited by lunatics and nuclear mutants.
Hero is released from prison after Governor’s “granddaughter” escapes and flees into Ghostland. Hero is tasked with bringing her back. Easier said than done, as Hero encounters all manner of mutants, outcasts, and familiar faces on his excursion into the lifeless wastes. While Prisoners of the Ghostland doesn’t have the same peaceful solitude seen in Arcadian, the post-apocalyptic survival elements share many similarities.
9 Season Of The Witch (2011)
Directed By Dominic Sena
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Cast |
Nicolas Cage, Ron Pearlman, Claire Foy |
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Runtime |
1h 35min |
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RT Critic Score |
11% |
Look, there are Nic Cage movies that are good movies, and there are Nic Cage movies that are good because they’re bad movies. Season of the Witch falls into the latter category. Nic Cage plays Behmen, a Teutonic Knight in the 14th-Century who, after deserting his order alongside a fellow knight, wanders into a village stricken by the Black Plague on his return to Austria.
Immediately pegged as deserters, Behmen and his fellow knight are captured and taken to Cardinal D’Ambroise, who tasks them with escorting a woman accused of being a witch to his monastery. The monks there can supposedly nullify her witch powers, and in doing so, cure the Black Plague. While the horror elements of Season of the Witch don’t show up until the later stages of the film, there’s a similar melancholic stillness to rural Styria that is comparable to the feeling of the family’s farmland in Arcadian.
8 Sympathy For The Devil (2023)
Directed By Yuval Adler
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Cast |
Nicolas Cage, Joel Kinnaman, Alexis Zollicoffer |
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Runtime |
1h 30min |
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RT Critic Score |
58% |
There’s nothing better than when Nic Cage can get a little unhinged, and it feels like Sympathy for the Devil was created exclusively for this purpose. David, played by Joel Kinnaman, is on his way to the hospital where his wife is giving birth when a stranger known only as The Passenger gets into his car. The Passenger holds a gun to David’s head and tells him to start driving.
David’s attempts to rescue himself from this situation only make things worse, and soon, The Passenger has not only taken David hostage, but has murdered the people who David was looking to for help. As The Passenger reveals more about the kidnapping, he becomes more unhinged, and seems to think he knows David from another life. While very little about Nic Cage’s performance here is comparable to Arcadian, the question of what – if any – supernatural forces are present in the story drive it forward in the same way that the monsters in Arcadian do.
7 The Wicker Man (2006)
Directed By Neil LaBute
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Cast |
Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Leelee Sobiesky |
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Runtime |
1h 42min |
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RT Critic Score |
15% |
Possibly the most iconic “bad Cage” movie of the bunch – and it’s a big bunch – 2006’s The Wicker Man remake would have been a disaster of epic proportions if not for the presence of Nic Cage, who managed to elevate the movie to cult status. Cage plays policeman Edward Malus, who sets out to rescue his daughter after he receives news that she has disappeared near the compound of a neo-pagan cult.
Malus’ search for his daughter is ultimately futile, but it leads to some excellent cinema moments, which will, for better or worse, go down as some of the best of Cage’s career. From the bear suit fight to destroying beehives, Cage is as unhinged as he gets in The Wicker Man. While there isn’t a ton to compare between this movie and Arcadian, fans of Nic Cage horror movies would be remiss if they missed out on this movie’s most legendary scene: “The bees! Oh god the bees!”
6 Mandy (2018)
Directed By Panos Cosmatos
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Cast |
Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache |
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Runtime |
2h 01min |
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RT Critic Score |
90% |
It wouldn’t be fair to talk in jest about Nic Cage’s worst horror movie without following it up by discussing his best. Mandy is more than that though; this is one of Cage’s best movies, period. He plays Red Miller, a veteran who lives with his girlfriend Mandy Bloom. On her way to work one day, Mandy catches the eye of a cult leader, who orchestrates her kidnapping. However, when she doesn’t succumb to his seductions, the cultists burn Mandy alive and force Red to watch.
Naturally, Red sets out on a quest for revenge, a quest that becomes bloody very quickly and only gets worse the further along it goes. What makes Mandy special are the psychedelic elements that work their way into the movie’s visuals once Red is dosed with the cult’s LSD. Coupled with his violent revenge, the movie looks like nothing viewers will find anywhere else. It may not have the same emotional family bonds as Arcadian, but this is a must-watch for Nic Cage fans of any kind.
5 Mom And Dad (2017)
Directed By Brian Taylor
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Cast |
Nicolas Cage, Selma Blair, Lance Henriksen |
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Runtime |
1h 26min |
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RT Critic Score |
74% |
This unusual slasher movie was Nic Cage’s second collaboration with director Brian Taylor, and it’s a bit of an underappreciated classic. Mom and Dad is about a strange TV signal that causes the world’s parents to murder their children. Cage plays Brent, a father of two who is in the midst of a midlife crisis. As might be expected, soon Brent and his wife Kendall are trying to kill their kids.
Despite being, at its core, a schlocky slasher film with brutal kills and lots of gore, Mom and Dad plays with some interesting ideas about the frustrations parents feel towards their children (which are all voiced with gleeful malice by Brent and Kendall in their crazed states), as well as the instinctive sense of safety children should feel around their parents. Almost the inverse of the family dynamic in Arcadian, this movie still features the same Nic Cage as a dad trying to take care of his kids as best he can…until he loses his mind, of course.
4 Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance (2012)
Directed By Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor
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Cast |
Nicolas Cage, Idris Elba, Ciarán Hinds |
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Runtime |
1h 36min |
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RT Critic Score |
19% |
After the lackluster results of Nic Cage’s first Ghost Rider movie, Colombia Pictures switched up their directors and brought in the pairing from the Crank films, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. These two added fresh energy to the big-screen Ghost Rider, and while it can’t hold a candle to the MCU movies of the time, nor does it stick all that close to its source material, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is a massive improvement over the first movie, and a rock-solid entry in the Cage library.
Johnny Blaze, aka. Ghost Rider (aka. Nic Cage), is recruited to rescue a kidnapped boy named Danny from the clutches of Roarke, a demon seeking to extend his life by transferring himself into Danny’s body. In exchange for rescuing the boy, Johnny will be freed from the Ghost Rider curse. What Spirit of Vengeance does particularly well is the way it interprets Ghost Rider’s possession of vehicles, as everything from cars to bikes to construction equipment becomes a Hell Ride. While the movie pales in comparison to some of the best stories in the Ghost Rider canon, it’s still a fun time, and gives Cage lots of opportunities to get weird on-screen, which is always a good thing.
3 Drive Angry (2011)
Directed By Patrick Lussier
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Cast |
Nicolas Cage, Amber Heard, William Fitchner |
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Runtime |
1h 44min |
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RT Critic Score |
47% |
Released almost exactly one year before Spirit of Vengeance, and bearing so many similarities to the Ghost Rider sequel that it likely had a hand in its box office flop, Drive Angry is a Nic Cage action-horror flick that never takes itself seriously, and benefits greatly as a result. Cage is John Milton, who escapes from hell by stealing Satan’s gun, and is looking to hunt down his daughter’s killer, a man named Jonah King. In his own words, Milton wants to “drink a beer out of Jonah King’s skull.” That’s the kind of movie this is.
There are only a handful of Cage movies that lean into the grindhouse method of “serious unseriousness,” and none do it better than Drive Angry. From the over-the-top kills to Cage’s too-cool-for-this-Earth performance, this movie is a 105-minute joyride. This is almost the reverse of Arcadian in terms of tone, but it’s must-see Nic Cage horror content nonetheless.
2 Color Out Of Space (2019)
Directed By Richard Stanley
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Cast |
Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, Madeleine Arthur |
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Runtime |
1h 51min |
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RT Critic Score |
86% |
There are a ton of horror movies in Nic Cage’s catalog, but despite that, there aren’t many of them that can honestly be called “scary.” Arcadian is one of them, and another is Color Out Of Space, an adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name. Nic Cage plays Nathan, the father of three children and husband to Theresa. Nathan moves them into his family’s farm after Theresa has a medical operation, and shortly after they arrive, a meteor crashes in their backyard.
A strange color begins leeching from the meteor, infecting the ground and plants around it and changing them into inexplicable objects. Soon, the same thing begins happening to Nathan’s family. Color Out Of Space is one of the better Lovecraft movie adaptations out there, leaning heavily into the story’s cosmic horror as it depicts the breaking down of reality, and of Nathan’s sanity. Cage rocks in this one, capturing the perfect balance of unhinged terror and serious family drama that makes the movie click.
1 Bringing Out The Dead (1999)
Directed By Martin Scorsese
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Cast |
Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman |
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Runtime |
2h 01min |
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RT Critic Score |
73% |
This is a bit of an honorable mention, as it is not strictly a horror movie, but Bringing out the Dead belongs on this list because, despite its official genre listings, it is terrifying in the way that only Martin Scorsese can capture: the real-life horror that can confront viewers at any time. Cage plays Frank Pierce, a paramedic who is an insomniac and severely depressed. He is surrounded by death, having botched the treatment of a homeless teenager a month ago, and failed to save anyone’s life since.
Frank is haunted by the ghost of the homeless teen, and ends up embroiled in a world of heroin addicts and drug dealers. A strong inspiration for 2014’s Nightcrawler, Bringing out the Dead is Nic Cage before his current era, when he would still act his soul out on screen, and was given roles where he could do that. There are better serious Nic Cage movies from this time, but none are as downright frightening as this one.
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