Color Out of Space (2020)
dir. Richard Stanley
Rated: N/A
image: ©2020 RLJE Films
I came for Nicolas Cage, I stayed for Richard Stanley. In the newest adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft tale, Color Out of Space proves itself to be a delightful throwback to horror movies in the vein of Event Horizon and the original The Evil Dead. It’s a well-paced, atmospheric shocker that entertains as it horrifies.
Set on a rural farm on the east coast, Color Out of Space centers on the Gardner family. Husband and wife Nathan and Theresa have moved their three kids, teenagers Lavinia and Benny and younger son Jack, to Nathan’s father’s old farm. It’s a classic getting-out-of-the-rat-race setup, with the characters all making adjustments to their new lives.
Nathan has uprooted the family for a taste of the simple life, as Theresa fights breast cancer. Their daughter Lavinia, battling boredom since being plunked down in the sticks, practices Wicca. She hopes the spells she casts will protect her mother from the cancer that is ravaging her body. Benny smokes pot and hangs out with Ezra, a squatter who lives in a shack on the Gardner property. Jack, who is ten years old or so, is a little withdrawn; he has a closer relationship with the family dog than his parents or siblings.
The Gardners’ bucolic life – Nathan says they’re “living the dream,” even as he recognizes he’s slowly turning into his father – is upended when what they think is a meteorite slams into their property. As is usually the case in an H.P. Lovecraft story, and horror movies in general, the strange, glowing rock has brought with it an entity that harbors malevolent intentions.
Following his bonkers work in the absolutely gonzo movie Mandy, I expected more of the same from Nicolas Cage as Nathan. I got it, but Cage’s nutty performance is actually the least interesting thing about Color Out of Space. The sentiment of “I’m turning into my father” is made literal, as the deadly force from space begins to affect the family members in different ways.
Cage opts for one of his signature over-the-top voices and mannered deliveries whenever his character’s father starts to overtake Nathan’s personality. The best example is when he explodes in rage at Lavinia. In what might be a bit of unintentional comedy – or maybe it was totally intentional, with Nicolas Cage, who the hell knows – Nathan spits at his daughter, “Get the fuck out of my face. Wait, I’ll save you the trouble and get the fuck out of yours,” before storming off.
Cage is a lot of fun, but director Richard Stanley was the real revelation for me. This is Stanley’s first feature film since being unceremoniously fired from the 1996 film The Island of Dr. Moreau after only a few days of shooting. The details surrounding that bit of movie-making drama is a tale for another day, and it’s covered in the 2014 documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau. Between ’96 and 2015, Stanley directed a few documentaries and several short films before gearing up for Color Out of Space.
The director is a big fan of Lovecraft’s work – he’s said that Color is the first in a planned trilogy of adaptations of the author’s works – and it shows. From the opening frames of his picture, in which the camera glides through a forest as we get voiceover narration, Stanley sets a spooky, otherworldly mood for the terror to come.
Stanley’s screenplay, written with horror screenwriter Scarlett Amaris, is a bit clunky at times. The character who delivers the voiceover in that opening sequence, a hydrologist named Ward Phillips, serves as a catch-all audience surrogate instead of being fully realized. Ward is ostensibly in town to do surveying for a planned hydroelectric dam. As things get weirder and weirder down on the farm, Ward proves himself to be an authority – for our benefit – on just about everything. At one point during the movie, I wrote in my notes, with a touch of sarcasm, “Are hydrologists usually experts on meteorites?”.
The visual aesthetics and mood of Color Out of Space is its real strength. The original short story has been called unfilmable – although it’s been adapted for the screen several times already. The titular color, which radiates out from the meteorite and slowly spreads over everything, is described in the story as a hue unlike anything ever seen by humans.
Stanley and his visual effects team translate that into a purplish-pinkish shade, using CGI effects to turn the movie into an almost psychedelic experience. It put me in mind of similar visual effects present in Alex Garland’s trippy Annihilation, another movie based on a book about a mysterious alien presence having strange effects on the humans who encounter it.
There’s also a dream-state quality to Color Out of Space I haven’t seen so evocatively executed since Mother!, the 2017 Darren Aronofsky film. The way Stanley stages characters losing track of time because of the alien force is particularly effective.
The horror elements of Color are also brilliant and unsettling. Without giving anything away, late in the film, Theresa and Jack become closer than any other mother and son in history, and the results are disturbing. Actor Joely Richardson – who serves as a link between this film and the horror cult-classic Event Horizon mentioned above – gives a striking performance, especially in this section of the film. There is also some effectively realized puppetry work – that’s what it looked like to me, anyway – when the Gardner family’s alpacas turn demonic.
Stanley also weaves H.P. Lovecraft’s grander vision of demonic forces (think Cthulhu) into his movie in its climax. For fans of the horror genre, Color Out of Space is a blast. For movie fans in general, it’s a richly stylized, if slightly structurally flawed, treat. It’s also one hell of a good time.
Why it got 3.5 stars:
- Some clunky structure and characters aside, Color Out of Space is an exercise in fun, trippy horror. All hail the return of Richard Stanley!
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- I didn’t even mention that Tommy Chong plays Ezra, the squatter living on the Gardner farm. He’s the mystic of the movie, the one who has a preternatural understanding of what’s happening. There’s one scene in particular where the dichotomy between science and mysticism (i.e. the hydrologist Ward Phillips and Ezra) comes to the fore. Chong is really effective late in the film when his character delivers some exposition in a trance-like state.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
Week eight of the lock-down. Not much to say, except I’ve settled into this thing, so it’s feeling more and more normal. I woke up at four in the morning one day last week, and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I took advantage of the quiet house to watch Color Out of Space (I knew that Rach would absolutely not have been interested in watching it. She has a deep hatred for Nic Cage.). Don’t worry, I connected my Bluetooth headphones to the TV, so as not to disturb Rach or (more importantly) the dog! Also, I was able to see Color via Hoopla, which is a streaming service that some library systems use to offer streaming content for free with a library membership.