We may have wrapped up our trifecta of film’s primarily set in South America, but we didn’t venture too far north in this latest WATC(H) offering, Grand Isle (2019). This film, in fact, is very southern, set on the coast of Louisiana (in the town of the same name) in the early 1980s–you can almost hear the Lynyrd Skynyrd blaring over the radio and feel the muggy winds blowing through your mullet as you partake. 

Grand Isle is an interesting southern film in that it doesn’t really touch on the more typical topics: southern gothic, racial tensions, civil rights, or southern romance. In fact, Grand Isle is probably more of a southern noir film that ventures deeply into the horror / thriller genre. This is one centers on a very specific marital  relationship gone wrong and although the temptation might be to compare it to Mandy the films aren’t really in the same category. Grand Isle is an uneven slow burn, whereas Mandy was the middle-length fuse that ignites slowly but then quickly screams its way to a massive explosion.

Let’s summarize and discuss.

The World According to Walter and Fancy

Walter Franklin (Nicolas Cage) is married to Fancy (KaDee Strickland). From the beginning, we know the two do not get along. Their story begins in 1988 in the Grand Isle, Louisiana. If Walter is some kind of crazy southern gentlemen then Fancy is his randy, middle-aged southern belle living in a spacious antebellum home (passed down through Fancy’s family through generations). 

But Walter isn’t really a gentlemen, and he’s not crazy, at least we can’t say this definitively at first. Instead, he’s pretty angry (at the world), inebriated and lazy. Fancy may be crazy, but we don’t know this at first either, but she wants more from her married life since she can’t have children and can’t seem to entice Walter to be interested in her physically. 

When the Franklin home is broken into by a masked man, Walter grabs his gun and shoots the intruder on his front lawn, breaking part of his white picket fence. The fate of the robber is not revealed, but we must assume he died. 

Walter hires a local blue collar guy, Buddy (Luke Benward), to fix his fence and promises him a big pay day if he can complete the work before an impending hurricane makes landfall. 

Buddy, who has an ill, newborn child at home and a wife dealing with post-partum, Lisa (Emily Marie Palmer),  takes the work in hopes of paying medical bills. While Buddy is working, Fancy flirts with and tries to seduce him, but he evades her advances while still drawing the anger and suspicions of Walter. 

The hurricane comes on quickly, stopping Buddy’s work and preventing him from returning home. Due to some car trouble, Buddy agrees reluctantly to stay at the Franklin home until the storm passes. 

Angry Walter refuses to pay Buddy what is owed since the work remains unfinished. Over an awkward meal and a few conversations, Buddy is pulled between the lusty and sad, Fancy, and the angry and inebriated Walter as both try to win Buddy over to their side of what feels like a long-fought marital battle. 

Fancy accuses Walter of not being a man, not being considerate of her needs, and not caring. Fancy tries again to seduce Walter while she has him alone in her bedroom. 

Walter stirs from his slumber and puts the kibosh on the love-making. He takes Buddy up into the attic and trades war stories with him. Walter wants to know what kind of bad shit happened to Buddy on his naval ship–but Buddy doesn’t tell him the whole story. 

Walter then tries to convince Buddy that his wife is crazy and that she has a terminal disease. 

Walter offers to give Buddy a bag full of money if he will kill Fancy (since he claims he can’t do it) and he even provides the poison so he can do the deed painlessly. Fancy foils this plan easily by FINALLY seducing Buddy and telling him that Walter is lying about her supposed illness. Fancy finds the cyanide and Buddy admits to the plot.

Fancy says she’ll handle Walter, she sweet talks him and then stabs him in the hand with a knife. 

Walter knocks out Fancy with a hard slap and tells Buddy he has to finish the job. At gunpoint he tries to force Buddy to poison unconscious Fancy. 

But Buddy throws the cyanide in Walters face and then proceeds to pummel him pretty good. Buddy ties Walter to the stairway banister and then says he’s going to leave. Fancy tries to get him to take her with him, but he refuses. Walter starts talking about how DARK Fancy really is and hints at her secrets. 

Eventually, Walter convinces Buddy to check out what’s in the basement before he leaves even though Fancy doesn’t want him to. As Buddy attempt to explore the mysterious basement, Fancy finds a gun and tries to shoot Buddy.

Buddy ducks into a different room and discovers a nearly dead person hooked into an IV drip (likely the teenager who was shot by Walter in the beginning of the film). The young man is so drugged he can barely speak but whispers to Buddy that he needs help and that there are others in the house. 

Walter busts into the room and chases Buddy around the house. Buddy almost escapes but Fancy hits him in the head with a frying pan, knocking him unconscious.

Buddy wakes up sitting in his truck on an empty road and there’s a dead body next to him. Before he can react the police show up and surround the car. 

The entire movie has interludes from the questioning room where Buddy is being grilled for murder of the teenager by none other than Detective Jones (Kelsey Grammer). Jones, a real southern gentlemen, is trying to figure out why Buddy murdered the young boy as Buddy shares his side of the story. 

Through a piece of evidence about belonging to a missing teens, Buddy convinces the police to search Walter and Fancy’s home to see if their are other missing teens there. 

Spoiler alert: They are there, hidden away in the basement. At the home, the police discover that Fancy was imprisoning the teenage girls, and with some impregnating them in order to force them to have children for her. 

Fancy loses her shit before getting arrested as Walter escapes from the police. Two weeks pass as Grand Isle deals with the aftermath and damage of the hurricane. 

As an almost unnecessary post-script to main reveal, Walter cleans up, shaves, gets in his Marine outfit and kidnaps Buddy’s wife and child at gunpoint. He makes Buddy confess to the secret that he had been keeping from him during the Navy–that he saw his friend burning / dying from an enemy attack and he turned and run away, a coward. Walter feels that this somehow proves that he and Buddy had something in common. 

It’s a complicated backstory not worth telling. Detective Jones comes and tries to talk Walter off a ledge. But Walter has decided that since Fancy has been admitted to a mental hospital, he has nothing left to live for. He raises his gun to try suicide by cop. He gets his wish and is shot many times–dead.

The End.

Southern Man

Being from Kentucky, I feel a certain liberty in how I speak about people from the South. While Kentucky was a border state during the Civil War, having soldiers who fought for both sides, it still feels very South in its culture and history. I grew up using the word “redneck” quite liberally, almost as a term of endearment, as a way of describing a certain type of southern man.

Walter is a redneck.  I’d say this is objectively true, but feel free to argue with me about it. The only way he could be *more* redneck would be for him to be wearing the white tank top wife beater and sitting in front of his trailer (instead of his yawning wide-porched colonial). 

What makes Walter a redneck? Well, for personal appearance: his long scraggly hair, his unshaven beard with handlebar mustache, his big belt buckle, his boots, his jeans and button down shirt hanging open. For activities: the constant drinking (we’re still talking stereotypes here) and especially the drinking long-necked bottled PBR beer, grumbling about the government, and talking about his time in ‘Nam. Taking target practice from the roof of his home, shooting bottles off of a white picket fence also seems a bit redneckish to me. Especially, since he does this within a few feet from the man he has hired to fix his fence. 

Unlike when he has been playing Asian swordmasters or knights, the redneck role kind of fits Nicolas Cage. It’s that trashy Elvis quality that emanates from his aura. Walter is a somewhat more cynical version of Joe from Joe and the other Joe from Between Worlds. Maybe he’s a bit saltier, too, because he never should have gotten married in the first place–especially to a high maintenance broad like Fancy. 

Whiplash Plot Twist

When you start watching Grand Isle you get the sense that some dark shit is going to go down. Someone gets shot in the first few minutes of the film, but it’s unclear what exactly is going to occur with this twisted couple and their unsuspecting boarder. Girl scouts show up at the door to sell Fancy some cookies, and that interaction is an uneasy one. Then there’s a lot of foreshadowing on the radio / TV broadcasts, playing in the background, about missing teenagers. There are also weird voodoo dolls scattered around the home. You think maybe there’s something paranormal going on here.

But what you aren’t expecting is that Fancy and Walter are imprisoning (and impregnating!) the young people they come in contact with. We haven’t seen such a radical shift at the end of the film since Guarding Tess (1994). You think you are witnessing a crime drama perhaps or a marital-infidelity-leading-to-terrible-revenge story, but in fact, it’s a psychological thriller. This idea will come into play again later when we cover Longlegs (2024)

Close But No Cigar

This film kept my attention, but it was by no means a perfect thriller. Fancy and Walter make for a good neurotic pairing and their taut-jaw tension perpetuates the unease throughout. The discovery scene when Walter “outs” Fancy’s dark side and Buddy finds the guy in the storage room definitely raises the heartbeat a bit. 

What’s weird is Walter’s motivation though. It’s unlikely that he escapes the police if he is suspected of kidnapping and entrapping teenagers. What’s even more unlikely is that he chases down Buddy and his wife in order to force Buddy to tell his “military secret”. Why?!? Walter seems to be driven by some guilt perhaps, but he also seems like the type to preserve his own self interest. Seems weird that he would be fearful enough to escape a prison sentence only to come back for Buddy’s story. Sure, sure, he did end up committing suicide by cop, but why come back at all?

I guess as a southern man, he had to live up to his promise to come back for Buddy and his whole family. A man’s word is his honor.

Firsts for Nicolas Cage as Walter

• Looking like a guy who most defintely listens to Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Taking shooting practice dangerously close to his hired hand
• Forgetting his anniversary (pissing off his wife)
• Shuttering windows for a hurricane
• Very unhappily married
• Drinking a mint julep
• In a cuckold situation
• Offering a guy a bag of cash ($20K) in exchange for killing his wife

Recurrences

• Long hair and bearded (Multiple)
• Shoots someone in the opening scene (Drive Angry)
• Redneck (Raising Arizona, Joe, Between Worlds)
• Smoking a cigar (Multiple)
• Handling a poison to take care of an “enemy” (Kill Chain)
• Ex-Marine (Multiple)
• Getting slapped hard in the face by a woman (Multiple)
• Vietnam vet (Birdy)
• Has some obvious PTSD (Windtalkers)
• Knocking out a woman (The Wicker Man)
• Dies at the end in a shootout (Multiple)

Quotables

“You sure as hell picked the wrong house”

“Oh there HE IS. Mr. Negotiator all of a sudden.” 

“I know they call you all squids, but you look like a tadpole to me.”

“You push me once, I might let it go. You push me twice, I might react.”

“Looks like the good Lord doesn’t want you to make extra money. That’s gotta hurt.”

“What is it tadpole? Can’t swim?” 

“Poor bastard’s only gonna sleep with one woman for the rest of his life.” 

“When was the last time you had your, COCK, SUCKED?”

“People only know gratitude when they’re faced with life and death choices.”
“This is the real tragedy of life. Unappreciation.”

“This entire system is programmed for the American youth to die so that the blubbery old Washington fat cats can stay rich.” 

“You see what you did! You made me hit a woman!” 

“POUR IT ON THE RAG!” 

“You kicked my ass. Worthy warrior.”

“Slay me here. I’m ready.” 

“She got a dark side. Darker than hell.” 

“You better kill me now. Or I’ll be coming for you. You and your whole family.”

“ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES?”

Conclusion

Are there any life lessons to be learned from Nicolas Cage as a southern man?

Some options (maybe): 

• If you live in the south, be careful where you “shelter in place” during a hurricane. 
• If a guy starts taking target practice at you when you are doing some work at his house, best to just leave right then and there. All deals are off.
• If your car won’t start when you are ready to leave, just hitchhike or walk. Best to escape with your life even if you have to face a hurricane.
• Never a good idea to forget your anniversary. Spouses don’t appreciate it much.

And with that we journey on to the absolute WORST ranked Nicolas Cage film according to IMDB: Jiu-Jitsu. Yay.