10/21/2023
Color Out of Space (2019) Unrated
imdb 6.2
Warning: Comments may contain spoilers.
This movie brought me so much joy, in a way that only a truly daring, authentically campy, and at times genuinely terrifying horror flick can. It just has this undeniable spirit. It surprises and delights and yet refuses to treat you with kid gloves.
I came for the Nic Cage, I stayed for the Richard Stanley. Who is he, you ask? Remember a little film called Hardware? No? How ‘bout Dust Devil? Still nothing? Okay, okay, then you must’ve heard of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Yes! Remember that? Ok, so he was fired after four days of directing it. But before that he’d spent four years developing it. The blow nearly ended his career. But it was an altogether crazy shoot…Marlon Brando’s daughter had just committed su***de, Val Kilmer got a divorce, the French set off an atom bomb near Brando’s atoll, David Thewlis vowed never to speak of his on-set experience…we don’t have to get into it but suffice it to say Stanley’s firing seems to have been part of a larger curse on the project.
So, according to Elijah Wood and the rest of the production team, to bring Stanley out of 24 years in hiding and onto this project they had to track him down and ask him directly. It was always part of the vision for this deformed baby that he would be the one to birth it. And what a birthing it is. I’d go so far as to say we’re witnessing the comeback of a master of the genre.
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The script is based on Lovecraft’s short story, and Stanley stays perfectly attuned to that Lovecraftian sense of the inexplicable, the indescribable, the cosmically, existentially grotesque. It’s no easy feat. If you’ve read Lovecraft, you’ll agree that he never really describes anything in his stories except in such uncertain terms, although a general tone of mystery and dread tends to pervade them—like an occult/sci-fi Poe. To create something visually compelling that still upholds that mood is a highwire act from which many other directors have fallen.
Set on the secluded alpaca farm of a lovely little family of intellectuals seeking isolation from their previous city life, the story’s events are set in motion after a meteor lands in their yard, then eventually crawls into their well, contaminating the aquifer that feeds into everything from the lush surrounding forest to the ice cubes in Dad’s whiskey glass. The result is an unpredictable series of monstrous effects the likes of which I haven’t had the pleasure to enjoy since the early days of David Cronenberg. But the film doesn’t just rely on monster makeup to get by; the script relentlessly defies your expectations and desires for the safety of family, until you are pleading for the film to stop hammering you into sublime submission.
Yes, some of the light effects are a bit Poltergeist (read: corny). Some of the lines are laugh-out-loud camp. Cage is fully unhinged. Chong (of Cheech & Chong) has a fun little bit part. You know, it’s just…weird. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it has a lot of heart. I dig it and I want to see more like it. Score: 8/10
Alex Daniels
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Movie Chatr would like to thank Alex Daniels for such a great review of this film!
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