After the infamous failure of his 1996 Island of Dr. Moreau, which he was not even allowed to finish, director Richard Stanley gave up filmmaking. (Check out the 2014 documentary, Lost Soul, for more about that; the story behind scenes of that movie is WILD.) Stanley finally returned after two and a half decades in the wilderness to adapt an H.P. Lovecraft short story. And who else could star in a redemption story this incredible than internet sensation, Nicolas Cage? That means we have an infamous director adapting an infamous horror writer with an infamous star. How could you not see Color Out of Space?
Color Out of Space was already one of my favorite movies of this year. I was fortunate enough to catch it in theaters back in January before the untimely plague-related death of cinema. It is streaming now on Shudder. Before you even read this review, I say go see it. It is a Hell of a movie. Imagine if the movie Annihilation was far stupider but also somehow more gonzo? What if it had even grosser body horror and was even more indebted to John Carpenter’s The Thing?
The original story, “The Colour Out of Space”, was one of the first examples of cosmic mind-bending horror. (And luckily has very little of Lovecraft's racism.) It was a huge inspiration for Annihilation, the book and the movie. Plus, you can see that story’s fingerprints in a lot of Stephen King. It is about an alien meteor landing in the woods around New England and polluting the natural world. Reality itself begins to bend, creating impossible colors in the mind of the unnamed narrator. Now how do you film a color that cannot be described and does not exist?
Easily, actually. Richard Stanley just goes with a sickly neon pink. Problem solved.
The movie is about the Gardner family. You had Nathan (Nic Cage), Theresa (Joely Richardson), and their three kids (Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), Benny (Brenden Meyer), and Little Jack (Julian Hilliard). The character of Ward Phillips (Elliot Knight) roughly matches the original story’s narrator. (Ward is Black too. Take that, Howard, you old racist.) He’s a hydrologist surveyor who discovers something not right with the groundwater after a meteor lands in the Gardners’ backyard. However, the water is the least of anybody problems soon enough.
Nathan and Lavinia are the most prominent leads. Color Out of Space opens with Lavinia riding her white horse to a lake and performing some teenage girl witchcraft. You are not sure what year it is even until Ward walks in with modern clothing. We then discover the movie’s cast is full of quirks. The family has a barn full of llamas. Nic Cage’s father apparently talked like his character from Vampire’s Kiss, complete with the inexplicable slurred English-ish(?) accent. As somebody who loves Vampire’s Kiss, I am infinitely grateful Richard Stanley let him break out that hilarious voice again. As the characters break down and shit goes even crazier, Nic Cage just goes for it full-speed with a big screaming performance. (Between Mandy and Color, Nic Cage is having some great years.) Plus, Tommy Chong is hanging around the movie too.
Color Out of Space starts weird and keeps getting weirder. Just when you think shit has gotten so out of hand it couldn’t possibly get worse, oh no. The movie is only half over. You will not believe the cruel things that this movie does to its cast.
Maybe it will just settle with Nic Cage going crazy and a few missing fingers? Oh no, that’s when people start getting fused together. “Benny lives in the well now.” Lavinia pulls out the Necronomicon for help. By the end the joyous festival of horror goes on for about five minutes too long. I really hate the final scene, personally. But that is fine. The rest of Color Out of Space is terrifying and wonderful in equal measure.
Yeah, so that is a huge recommendation for me on this one. It is everything you could have wanted out of Lovecraftian horror with Nic Cage. I didn’t much like his movie Hardware but I am glad to see Richard Stanley back after all these years. He certainly did not hold anything back with this one.
Next Time: Pulse (2001).
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