The five most abysmal movies from Nicolas Cage’s straight-to-video wilderness years
In the last couple of years, the movie world has remembered how much it loves Nicolas Cage. After a decade in the wilderness, the eccentric star has returned to mainstream cinema in a big way, receiving rave reviews for his performances in films like Longlegs, Pig, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and Dream Scenario.
It’s all a far cry from the 2010s, a horrible decade that saw Cage reduced to starring in an endless parade of straight-to-video dreck by a combination of poor career choices and wild overspending on things like castles and T-Rex skulls. To his credit, the star didn’t want to declare bankruptcy, so he simply worked his way through the lean years.
These years produced many truly godawful films, the worst of which I’ll detail in this list. However, it must be said that Cage rarely gave less than 100% in any of these films, as he’s a total professional. I’d also like to add that there are a handful of good movies from this period. In no particular order, the following pictures are all worth a Friday night watch: The Frozen Ground, Joe, The Trust, and Mom and Dad.
So, without further ado, here are the five most abysmal straight-to-video Nicolas Cage movies. I apologise in advance.
Fiv abysmal Nicolas Cage movies:
Grand Isle (Stephen Campanelli, 2019)
In Grand Isle, a bizarrely coiffed Cage plays a haunted Vietnam veteran who hires a young sailor named Buddy to fix his fence. He then talks this young seaman into killing his wife, but instead, Buddy has sex with her. There’s also something about a hurricane, and Kelsey Grammer turns up halfway through as a detective investigating the whole sordid affair.
In its marketing materials, Grand Isle was described as an action thriller, but you’d be hard-pressed to get that from my plot description. I’ve seen the film and have very little memory of any action. Instead, I recall a film with production values that would make Tommy Wiseau blush, all in service of an overly convoluted story that doesn’t amount to a whole lot in the end.
Ultimately, Grand Isle is one of those direct-to-video efforts that doesn’t feel like a “real” film. You’ll know exactly what I mean if you’re a connoisseur of the recent low-budget films of Cage, Bruce Willis, and John Travolta.
Jiu Jitsu (Dimitri Logothetis, 2020)
Jiu Jitsu starred Cage and Frank Grillo, two screen presences I love more than is strictly healthy. It also featured Thai martial artist extraordinaire Tony Jaa, who had a budget of $25million, which is pretty substantial in the direct-to-video realm. The plot also sounded like something John Carpenter may have come up with in the ’80s and turned into a tongue-in-cheek cult classic. You see, the film told the tale of an ancient order of jiu-jitsu fighters who protect Earth every six years from the repeated invasion attempts of a race of vicious aliens.
Instead of being the kind of dumb, silly fun that scratches an itch every red-blooded cinephile feels from time to time, though, Jiu Jitsu wound up falling flat on its face. It’s a film that is too ridiculous to be taken seriously, yet most of the cast treats it like it’s very serious indeed. The action scenes are lacklustre, and it all somehow looks a bit janky despite having that sizeable budget.
In the end, there are some things even a headband-wearing, sword-wielding Cage can’t save – and it bums me out to write that.
Inconceivable (Jonathan Baker, 2017)
If there’s one genre I struggle to imagine Cage excelling in, it’s the erotic thriller. Cage is a lot of things, but he’s not generally seen as a sexy man. Maybe in his ’90s heyday, he might have been able to make a run at a Basic Instinct-esque thriller, especially with an A-list female co-star, but by 2017, all hope of a project like this being good was gone.
Step up Inconceivable, a truly dull piece of direct-to-video filmmaking that probably embarrassed everyone involved. Cage does everything he can to portray a regular guy who mistakenly allows a hot, crazy woman to live in his house to help his wife recover from a miscarriage. Most of the film plays out between Nicky Whelan and Gina Gershon, who play the murderous house guest and wife, respectively, while a bored-looking Cage pops in every now and again to remind viewers he’s in the movie.
Preposterously, the film also stars Faye Dunaway, who broke her leg days before filming and, therefore, shot her entire role from a seated position. Oh, and if you can say the title “Inconceivable” without doing an impression of Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride, you’re a better person than me.
Arsenal (Steven C Miller, 2017)
In 1993, Cage starred in Deadfall, a noir directed by his brother Christopher Coppola. It barely had a theatrical release and is mostly remembered for Cage’s lunatic performance, which included a silly wig and putty nose. In 2022, co-star Michael Biehn called it a “bizarre little movie” and said, “His brother directed him, and I think he just said, ‘Nic, do whatever you want.’ I think Nic is best probably when he’s got somebody that just holds him back a little bit.”
Maddeningly, in 2017, Cage starred in Arsenal, a direct-to-video action movie which co-starred John Cusack and Entourage’s Adrien Grenier. For some ungodly reason, Cage played his character from Deadfall in the film and took the opportunity to go even more wildly over the top. The fact it’s the same character will go over the heads of 95% of the people who watch the movie, though, making it a niche in-joke that only the most dedicated Cageheads will get. Whatever the case, the movie is abysmal, and even Cage going all out with his role can’t inject much of a pulse into proceedings.
Strangely, the film is called Southern Fury in some territories, meaning Cage’s Eddie King character has now starred in two movies with three titles, none of which have anything to do with each other. Weird.
Left Behind (Vic Armstrong, 2014)
Unlike the other films on this list, Left Behind did receive a theatrical release in the US and some other territories but went straight to disc/streaming in the UK. For this reason, I reckon it’s fair game for my ignominious list. Before I proceed to tear the movie to shreds, though, I’ll give it one compliment: it gave Cage one of his best character names. “Rayford Steele” is in good company in a career that has featured marvellous monikers like Memphis Raines, Castor Troy, Stanley Goodspeed, and Benjamin Franklin Gates.
Sadly, a winningly preposterous character name is the only nice thing I can say about this misbegotten film. Based on a novel which portrays the Christian Rapture as a disaster narrative, it was so ineptly made that it didn’t even please the Christian audience it was primarily aimed at. Cage is all at sea in the film and can’t do anything to stop it crashing and burning.
Depressingly, Cage was replaced for an even shonkier 2023 sequel where Kevin Sorbo inherited the role of Steele. Hey, maybe Sorbo playing the same part as Cage is one of the first signs of the Rapture?
