[rating=8.00]
There’s no denying the long reach of H.P. Lovecraft. His stories have touched and affected not just the world of horror but the wider pop cultural landscape. Everyone these days has at the very least a vague conception of what Cthulhu is even if they’ve never touched a single page of a single Lovecraft work. While his works (and their rampant misogyny and racism) haven’t aged terribly well into the modern age, his influence can be felt in almost every major author currently working within the horror landscape.
He was purveyor of the weird, the things that go bump in the night, the wild terror of the unknown. Derided as mere pulp nonsense (and, to be sure, it was) the depth of his imaginative works cast a long shadow on those who came after, influencing the genre for decades.
Throughout the long life of Lovecraftian horror, however, few movies have been able to translate what makes him so effective onto the screen. Not for want of effort. Owing to his public domain status, the shelves of full to the brim of cheap, direct to video nonsense that proclaim the titles of his best-known works without any of what made them so effective to begin with. The best Lovecraft movie—John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness—isn’t even a Lovecraft movie. It’s an homage. A love letter.
And so, you can be forgiven if you look at Color Out of Space with a bit of a side eye. It is, after all, based on one of his weirder tales, one which hinges on the existence of a color never before seen, and stars, perhaps perfectly, Nicolas Cage. It is also director Richard Stanley’s first feature directorial effort since being dramatic fired from 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau just four days into the troubled shoot (the drama of which you can witness in David Gregory’s documentary, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau). On paper, Color Out of Space has a lot working against it.
But what does paper know?
Despite seeming like it has every opportunity to be another Lovecraftian disaster, Color Out of Space is the best adaptation of a Lovecraft story ever made. Stanley has concocted a true-to-feeling retelling of the bizarre classic that perfectly captures the atmosphere of Lovecraft while making the story more palatable for modern audiences. It is a batshit ride through the trails of the unknown that will haunt you long after the lights come up and the credits roll.
The film follows the family of Nathan Gardner (Cage), who live an idyllic life in rural Massachusetts. Recovering from the trauma of the matriarch’s, Theresa (Joely Richardson) brush with cancer, the family of five are just trying to live a normal life. Their normalcy is shattered when a meteorite crashes onto their property. Glowing a strange color, the meteorite slowly begins to infect their lands and affect their minds, leading the Gardners down a spiraling path of paranoia and insanity.
There is perhaps no one more suited to this film that Cage, who has become a kind of living meme standing in testament to the power of absurd overacting. His Nathan oscillates beautifully between loving father and husband and slow insanity. He’s even a bit subdued…well, subdued for a Cage performance, at any rate. Stanley and Cage know that Lovecraftian horror relies on the slow build that inches ever closer to the bizarre reveals that force us to contend with the abject horror of the uncanny in silently terrifying ways. In a sense, they are the perfect partnership to bring this film to life.
While Cage might steal the show, the bulk of the film focuses on young Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), the family’s daughter and resident outcast. Inasmuch as there’s a mystery to be solved, she’s the one who leads us further down the path to madness. There’s a lot resting on Arthur’s shoulders and she carries it well. She offers us our sympathetic avatar into the bizarre world of Color Out of Space. As the terror mounts, she stands as our touchstone. If she’s okay, we’re okay.
Stanley, meanwhile, proves that he’s more than capable of handling a feature film with numerous moving parts. It’s enough to make you wonder just what his Dr. Moreau might have been without the cantankerous stars and studio meddling. He takes an inherently unfilmable narrative and creates a one-of-a-kind cinematic experience. While the film is somewhat rough around the edges, especially in the first act, the longer it runs the more intoxicating it gets until you’re left in a world of pure insanity that is impossible to look away from.
With all the buzz and festival acclaim received by Color Out of Space, it’s not really surprising to hear that Stanley has been tapped to helm two more Lovecraft films to form a kind of shared universe. It’s not difficult to imagine him leading that charge. The Lovecraftian mythos is rich and varied and it shouldn’t be difficult for Stanley to create a trilogy of loosely linked stories centered around Miskatonic University and the Cthulhu narratives.
While that certainly gives us a lot to look forward to in the future, Color Out of Space still stands as a near perfect representation of what’s possible for Lovecraftian horror on the big screen. Fans will revel in the Easter eggs and nods while newbies won’t need to worry if they’re missing out on a larger picture. Regardless of your experience level with Lovecraft, Stanley has crafted a wonderfully watchable and intensely bizarre film that accomplishes the seemingly impossible.
Color Out of Space is now playing in theaters everywhere.
