Arcadian review: Freaky monsters and apocalyptic chills – if only there was more of Nicolas Cage

In cinemas, Cert 15A

Nicolas Cage, Jaeden Martell and Maxwell Jenkins in 'Arcadian'

Chris Wasser

Nicolas Cage at the end of the world? That sounds like fun – and for a while at least, Benjamin Brewer’s eerie, post-apocalyptic chiller seems to know what it’s at. The problems kick in when Arcadian sidelines its leading man.

Cage plays Paul, a weary father at the end of time, whose twin boys Joseph (Jaeden Martell) and Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins) have become a bit of a handful.

One of them is a genius; the other appears to have fallen for a teenage girl (Sadie Soverall’s Charlotte) on a nearby farm. These things happen, but this is no ordinary life. Civilisation, it seems, is largely kaput, and the lads are forced to put up with daily attacks from malicious, otherworldly creatures who only ever come out after the sun goes down. You can see where this is going.

Filmed in Wicklow, Brewer’s film certainly looks the part, and we won’t forget its freaky, ferocious monsters in a hurry. It’s the clumsy, derivative ­story – a watery cross between I Am Legend and A Quiet Place – that lets us down.

Arcadian has no real identity, no real ideas of its own – and an uncharacteristically reserved Cage is missing from half of it. A wasted opportunity, indeed.

Two stars