Color Out of Space

Color Out of Space

2019

Director- Richard Stanley

Cast- Nicholas Cage, Joely Ricahrdson, Madeleine Arthur, Brendan Meyer, Julian Hilliard, Elliot Knight, Q'orianka Kilcher, Tommy Chong, Josh C. Waller

           

      The Gardner family lives an idyllic life on their remote farm deep in the forests of New England. The father (Nicholas Cage from Drive Angry, Mandy and a million other things) is a grown up hippy who believes firmly that his alpacas are the food source of the future. His wife (Joely Richardson, who you may recognize from Event Horizon) is a financial advisor, recovering from cancer. She spends her days in the attic talking with investors via w-fi. Their youngest son, Jack, likes to play with the dog and their oldest son, Benny, likes to smoke pot and hang out with Ezra (Tommy Chong), a weirdo who lives in a shack “off the grid”. Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) is their teenage daughter who fancies herself a witch and dabbles in the occult, hoping for a more exciting life.

            

     Their serene existence is interrupted when a meteor strikes the Earth late one night. The youngest son, Jack, who actually saw the strike, suffers temporary disassociation and a foul odor permeates the air around the meteor. A surveyor who is studying the water table finds an unusual contamination and believes the meteor is the source.

            

     

   

   The next night a storm comes up and the meteor acts as a lightning rod, attracting numerous strikes. The following morning, the meteor is gone, apparently destroyed by the lightening.

            

     Contamination spreads through the Gardner’s farm. Their vegetables grow rapidly but are inedible. Animals mutate into horrible forms. Worst of all, each member of the family seems to be losing their mind, some more rapidly than others. Lavinia, who is losing her mind as well, turns to the only thing she knows, the occult, for protection.

           

     The movie is based on the H.P. Lovecraft short story The Colour Out of Space. It is one of Lovecraft’s most popular stories and has been adapted to the screen numerous times with varying degrees of success. The best known attempts are probably the 1965 Boris Karloff film Die, Monster, Die! and the 1987 film The Curse, starring Will Wheaton. This latest version adapts the plot of the story decently but its real strength is in capturing the essence of Lovecraft, which is pretty hard to do in film.

            

     There are two recurring themes in Lovecraft’s fiction. First, is the insignificance of humanity. Lovecraft postulated a universe with cosmic forces so powerful that they could destroy us without even noticing. The other recurring theme is the inherent unknowability of the universe. Our religions, psychologies, and laws of physics, only capture the tiniest fraction of reality and any glimpse of the greater truth would drive us insane. The feeble human brain wasn’t meant to grasp the true nature of existence.

 Having horrors that can’t be described works fine in literature, where the reader’s mind fills in the gaps that the writer leaves (this is the essence of guided imagery). This is a lot harder to pull off in film, where everything can be seen and heard. It is in this area, that Color Out of Space succeeds. We get glimpses of the alien menace but most is inferred.  The film does a really good job of depicting the changing landscape as the Color contaminates the Earth around it.

Nicholas Cage puts in a good performance (if a little over the top) as the father losing his mind but its Madeleine Arthur, as Lavinia, that steals the show. She practices the occult but seems to take it all with a grain of salt until it’s the only resource left to her.  Her descent into madness is slow but rewarding to watch.

One thing I really enjoyed was that (as befits a Lovecraft film) she turns to the Necronomicon for help. Rather than the grotesque human skin bound copy of The Evil Dead, she uses the old paperback 1977 “Simon” Necronomicon, the version that can still be found in bookstores today. Some viewers may think this is cheesy, but I thought it added authenticity.  What is a teenage girl going to have on hand? Is she going to have access to antediluvian tomes hidden away in ancient libraries written in forgotten languages? No, she’s going to have something she can buy at a bookstore. Besides, don’t try to act like you didn’t own a copy of that book yourself.

I’m not going to say that Color Out of Space is the best Lovecraft movie ever made. That honor belongs to Stuart Gordon’s 2001 film, Dagon. But Color captures the feel of Lovecraft as well as can be done. Average horror fans may or may not like it, depending on tastes, but I think every Lovecraft fan will enjoy it.

Fun fact- The director, Richard Stanley, seemed well on his way to becoming an accomplished genre director, 30 years ago. He directed the 1990 cyberpunk movie, Hardware, and the 1992 horror film, Dust Devil. His career came to a screeching halt during the disastrous filming of the 1996 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau. After a fall out with the studio, Stanely spent most of the next 20 years as either a screenwriter or documentary filmmaker. Color Out of Space seems to be his comeback, and Stanley plans for it to be the first in a trilogy of Lovecraft movies (let’s hope that happens!).