Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Nomads (1986)

IMDb plot summary: A French anthropologist specializing in nomadic groups moves to Los Angeles with his wife, and starts following a group of sinister street punks who seem to live and move around in a black van. But they aren't what they seem.
Directed by John McTiernan. Starring Lesley-Anne Down, Pierce Brosnan, and Anna Maria Monticelli.

Nomads centers on a doctor who begins to have unsettling hallucinations and memories that aren't her own after witnessing a man's death in the ER. She realizes she's seeing his memories of a bizarre group of... possessed dead bodies? Also a cult? While the movie has a couple of really interesting horror bits, the plot is nearly incomprehensible and we abandon our protagonist abruptly about 15 minutes into the movie to get an extended flashback of a character we never saw. The horror elements get sillier and sillier and don't fit together nicely at all, though I do feel like that ending image could be utterly chilling... if I was sure I knew what it actually implied, plotwise. As it is, it gave me a chill and then made me go, "But wait. WHAT?!" For all the good moments this movie has, it has far more terrible ones, and some bad acting from our leading lady and a horrible French accent from Pierce Brosnan don't do much to help it along. At least he doesn't sing, I guess.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Nomads < Gas Food Lodging
Nomads > Big Fat Liar
Nomads < Dirty Dancing
Nomads > The White Ribbon
Nomads < Ghost
Nomads < Master Harold and the Boys (2010)
Nomads < Crumb
Nomads > Solo: A Star Wars Story
Nomads > How to Irritate People
Nomads < Alice in Wonderland (1999)
Nomads < Treasures of the Snow
Nomads < The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Final spot: #2424 out of 3557, or 32%.

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