THE RETURN OF RICHARD STANLEY IS A MOSTLY BEAUTIFUL THING TO BEHOLD
THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE - starring Nicolas Cage, produced by SpectreVision
C
osmic horror is probably my favorite plate to order from the genre’s menu, which is why when I heard director Richard Stanley, the man that brought us Hardware (1990), would be pulling from Lovecraft’s stable of stories to make his long-awaited comeback, I was pretty damn excited. Armed with a love for the weird and uncompromising nature of the world around us, Stanley was the perfect choice to helm this project and for the most part he pulls it off.
Elevator Pitch: An average family’s quiet lives are thrown into an epic shitshow when an alien rock crash lands in their back yard and starts throwing off strange lights that change the landscape and themselves.
From the jump, one of my favorite things about this flick is how utterly useless science and magic are in fighting off an otherworldly presence. The hydrologist knows there’s something foul in the water, but is powerless to do anything but yell at people not to drink it, while the daughter’s attempts at conducting a Barker-esque ceremony to save her family is every bit as pointless as the one she tries to render her mother cancer free. The subtext of Lovecraft’s fiction has always been there is no way to overcome cosmic darkness and Color out of Space drives that point home in almost every scene.
The non-CGI visuals are enough to make me want to pack up my stuff and move to the closest mountain town. Thick mist winds its way through the trees, drifts across the screen creating the very definition of an ethereal space in a way that only Stanley has an eye for – not to mention that sweeping helicopter shots at the film’s end.
It’s been forever since I read the original story, so I’m not going to attempt to compare the two to see how it stacks up, but one thing I can note when it comes to Lovecraft’s work is that the majority of his characters aren’t really folks you want to kick it with – meaning stuffy ass intellectuals who probably say things like, “Well that couldn’t happen in this movie,” while pushing their glasses up the bridge of their nose. Stanley, however, gives us a family we give a damn about. The relationship between Cage and his wife played by Joely Kim Richardson (Event Horizon & RedSparrow) aren’t your typical “couple on the edge. Despite all the things they’ve been through, they’re still very much in love. In one of the films more tender moments, Cage tells Theresa that she’ll always be his golden girl regardless of the cancer surgery. In the hands of a less-skilled filmmaker, this scene would’ve played out poorly and boiled down to a gross husband ignoring his wife’s hesitation at being intimate after a mastectomy, but the moment is loving and the viewer gets the impression that this is something they both miss and want.
That said, a big downsides is actually Nicolas Cage, whose early work I truly enjoy, but who I also have a feeling has started to believe what audiences want is the Cage Caricature that’s been created by packs of film nerds everywhere – you know, the ol’ bug-eyed, crazy Nic Cage. Whenever Cage gets upset or frustrated in the film he adopts an accent that, in the words of old Howard Philips himself is an indescribable horror. It’s a bit of head scratcher to think that anyone let this slide since it seriously kills the tension being built and is less a man descending into madness and more like nerdlinger dad takes local improv class.
Much in the same way that Cage’s left field accent hamstrings certain scenes, there are a few visual effects that come across as goofy. For example, when one of the characters is murdered by tree branches it makes Raimi’s infamous tree scene award worthy or when the mother-son monster shambles across the room it’s fairly cartoonish.
It isn’t perfect, but that’s okay. Overall, Color Out of Space is well worth your time. Now before you ask me, it isn’t Mandy and that’s a good thing since that film exists in a realm all on its own. My hope is that more folks check this one out because Stanley wants to do a Lovecraft trilogy, the next installment of which is The Dunwich Horror and don’t act like you’re not down for that, so SHOW UP. We’re only going to get more of these films if asses fill seats.
