Nicolas Cage is This Generation’s Vincent Price

Nicolas Cage is the greatest living horror actor alive and working today. No one else has his range, his energy, and certainly not his skill at picking the most insane project possible to maximize his abilities.

In terms of horror clout and presence, the best comparison is Vincent Price, storied star of both brutal classics like Witchfinder General and hammy stunt roles like the narrator in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and a barely disguised version of himself in Scooby Doo. Price simply encompassed every aspect of horror, silly, serious, or saccharine, in a singular style, for half a century.

Cage has shown himself capable of that same dynamism. Starting with the Wicker Man remake in 2006, he easily matched the schlockier side of Price and the glory days of Hammer Film Productions. That movie may go down in cinema history as one of the most horrifically botched and unnecessary remakes ever, but Cage’s performance is still generating “not the bees” memes two decades later. It’s a masterpiece of absurd horror, albeit an accidental one, and a large part of that is Cage’s hyperbolic performance.

Cage would mostly stay away from horror for the next decade, concentrating on his action career. This is also the period when some of the weird legends about his life start. It was rumored Cage took any job to pay for his dinosaur fossil collection, albino cobras, and the pyramid he wants to be buried in. Price was cool as hell, being a bisexual icon, a gourmet chef, and an art collector, but he looks positively tame compared to Cage, a man who once had to publicly deny he was a literal vampire. In terms of a big personality, Cage frankly has Price beat.

The movie that really launched Cage as a modern horror icon is 2018’s Mandy. It’s a mind-bending film about cult leaders, with Cage playing a lumberjack who goes on a psychedelic-powered killing spree to avenge his fantasy artist girlfriend’s murder. Though a bomb at the box office, it quickly gathered a following online thanks to its trippy visuals, ultra violence, and Cage’s unhinged performance.

The next year, Cage starred in the single best straight adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story of all time, The Color Out of Space. In it, Cage shows his range again by playing a despondent alpaca farmer whose family is menaced by a reality-altering meteorite. While Cage does get a few opportunities to let loose his now trademark mania, he mostly serves as the film’s emotional center. Sometimes, he’s the most normal thing on screen.

Cage turned in another pair of incredible performances again in 2021. Pig was obviously aiming to recreate the cult buzz of Mandy, this time sending Cage on a vengeance quest against the people who killed his pet pig. It’s no mere copy, though. Cage brings oozes and sadness, and it’s frankly the deeper, more thoughtful work.

Later that year came his crowning horror achievement thus far, Willy’s Wonderland. Written in that weird limbo when we all knew they were going to make a Five Nights at Freddy’s movie but they hadn’t actually done so yet, Willy’s Wonderland is a blatant rip-off that is better than the official one that eventually came out.

Cage stars as a mute drifter coerced into cleaning an abandoned pizzeria, but who the locals are actually hoping will be eaten by haunted animatronics as a sacrifice. Instead, Cage’s character silently restores the restaurant to gleaming perfection while also battling the monsters. He even takes a musical pinball break that is a highlight of the movie.

There’s never been a horror movie quite like Willy’s Wonderland. It subverts horror tropes left and right, and Cage’s performance more accurately represents a video game protagonist that any other movie has ever managed. In its own way, the film is a revolutionary meta commentary on how protagonists act in a game versus how they usually act in film or television adaptations.

Cage added an iconic role to his resume by playing Count Dracula in the 2023 horror comedy Renfield. The plot was silly, and Cage’s performance irreverent even for him, but it was a hilarious gore-fest that left nothing on the table. In 2024, Cage would switch gears yet again, playing a serial killer in Osgood Perkins’s Longlegs, turning in a performance that was akin to Hannibal Lecter if the character had been written by Hunter S. Thompson.

Almost none of these film are talked about in the same breath as Get Out, Hereditary, or Sinners. They aren’t the icons of the elevated horror age. Then again, House of Wax, Mask of the Red Death, and even The House on Haunted Hill are not usually grouped with the greatest horror of the last century either. Nonetheless, they gave Price a grand, gory stage that made him iconic. The same is true for Cage.

Cage may not win Oscars for these roles, but all of them are unforgettable. Whether a hapless victim, an avenger, or a psycho, Cage has made nearly every horror appearance of his since 2006 at least memorable. The only contemporary that is close to matching him now is Mia Goth, who seems to be as comfortable as Cage when it comes to daring roles. She has a way to go yet. Until she does, Cage remains the Vincent Price of our generation.

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