Color Out of Space

The Gardner family - father Nathan (Cage), mother Theresa (Joely Richardson), Wicca daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), teen son Benny (Brendan Meyer), and young son Jack (Julian Hilliard) - lives on an isolated farm in New England. One night, a meteorite lands on their farm, accompanied by a strange, psychedelic light, and before long, the Gardners and their surroundings are affected in horrifying ways.

In recent years, Nicolas Cage has found a genre niche, working with unconventional filmmakers who play to his strengths in weird films that blend the boundary between arthouse and grindhouse.  That trend continues with Color Out of Space, but the bigger story pertains to director Richard Stanley.

Stanley, a South African filmmaker living in France, made a pair of cult titles, Hardware and Dust Devil, and seemed poised for bigger and better things. Unfortunately, his career took a hit after he was fired from The Island of Dr. Moreau (the behind-the-scenes drama is captured in the fascinating documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau.)

Stanley kept busy in the intervening years with a few documentaries and shorts, but Color Out of Space marks his first feature-length film in more than twenty years. The film is a welcome return for an auteur who has been silenced for too long.

Based on the H.P. Lovecraft story, Color Out of Space refers to the idea of colors existing beyond the human eye's capability to perceive, similar to Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing." Something alien, beyond our senses' capability to comprehend, has arrived, affecting us in minute ways that grow until, by the time we notice the changes, it's too late.

That sense of creeping cosmic horror and dread Lovecraft is famous for, and Stanley taps into it in the film. The movie takes its time, setting up the Gardners, their lives, and their foibles, and gradually, as the effects of the meteorite and what was on board take hold, the horror elements build until they explode into a maelstrom of monstrosities.

Color Out of Space initially plays like a virus movie. The Gardners, their dog, their llamas, their crops, and other creatures and wildlife are exposed to the meteorite, and at first, it alters their behavior. Sometimes, it's Nathan losing his temper more quickly or the dog becoming more aggressive. By the end, we witness mutations, strange new plants, and frightening acts of violence committed against and by humans and animals.

The weirdness escalates, too. Reality itself seems infected. Space and time bend and melt, and the familiar, rural environment gives ways to a surreal, kaleidoscopic nightmare. Lovecraft helped create the idea of cosmic horror - the idea that mankind is an insignificant speck in the grand scheme of the universe - and the movie taps into that, creating a sense of grand terror and awe apart from the gore.

Color Out of Space also has a sense of humor, knowing when to let Cage loose. If you want nutty Nic Cage, you'll get nutty Nic Cage, and the movie uses him in a way that doesn't detract from the scares. It drops our guard and then pulverizes us with genuinely unsuspecting developments that get under our skin.