You just never know what to expect when Nicolas Cage leads a movie these days. We’ve seen so many cheap, off-kilter turns from Cage that when we get something like Mandy, we all have to stop and say “wait, he’s still got it?” Well, now that Color Out of Space is here, time to stop and say it again: he’s still got it.
Director Richard Stanley’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story is a tense, gorgeous, darkly funny nightmare, anchored by a roller coaster of a Nicolas Cage performance.
The film brings Lovecraft’s short story into the modern-day and follows the Gardner family, living on a secluded farm in the fictional Arkham County, Massachusetts. Nathan (Nicolas Cage) has moved the family there to focus on his wife Theresa’s (Joely Richardson) recovery from breast cancer. Before long, a purplish alien meteorite crashes into their yard, and the psychic shockwaves it sends through the house are just the beginning of a slow descent into madness for the Gardner family. The Color, the disembodied force that escapes this meteorite and plagues the Gardners, proves to be an effective and malleable threat, and director Richard Stanley never runs out of new ways of using it to disturb and shock. The bounds of the Color’s power and influence are intentionally left vague, so the only real gauge of what it’s capable of is the deterioration of the Gardners. Sure, it starts with standard horror red flags, like phone calls from no one and youngest kid Jack (Julian Hilliard) ominously drawing scary monsters, but the Color proves to be much more adept at taking over its new home, warping time and enticing the Gardners to make increasingly dangerous choices in service of its purpose.
As a genre, cosmic horror (Lovecraft’s jam) generally calls for a lack of comprehension of the antagonists’ origins and motives. Stanley took that to heart, as the Color feels oppressive and dangerous thanks to the fact that we never end up learning too much about it. For such a destructive force, the Color is also beautiful, terraforming the area into a fantasyscape and tinting many scenes in a dreamy wash of pinks and purples. Color Out of Space seldom disappoints on the visual front, from the heights of the Color’s interdimensional tomfoolery all the way down to the way lights cut through the mist on the Gardner farm. Much of the film has a surreal quality, with a fantasy-tinged score and drawn out moments of quiet that feed into a permeating unease as things proceed.
[ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/01/17/color-out-of-space-official-final-trailer]
Color Out of Space walks an impressive tonal tightrope, deftly drifting between moments of real tension and a bizarre sense of humor that persists even through some of the film’s scarier moments. The film does occasionally stumble on that score, as there are a few times where characters say something off-kilter at a strange time to get an uncomfortable laugh, but for an adaptation of a Lovecraft story not known for its chuckles, the comedic beats are remarkably solid. Of course, if you’re telling a story that vacillates between raw horror and madcap mania, there’s only one person to call. Nicolas Cage’s hyper-energetic and over-the-top turn as Nathan Gardner is the standard-bearer for Color Out of Space’s weird tone, and it’s rare these days to see him fit into a story this well.
Oftentimes, when Cage turns the ol’ dial up to 11, he’s doing it in a movie where everything around him is markedly calmer. But here, at a farm with glowing wells and mutated animals, he’s got a lot of competition in the crazy department, and it’s a competition he tries his damndest to win. Sure, he starts off as a normal human, but as soon as the Color gives him an excuse, Cage is off to the races. Whether it’s a bizarre TV interview with a local reporter, a full volume solo meltdown in the front seat of a car, or his absolutely hilarious obsession with his alpaca scheme (yes, alpaca scheme) in the face of clearly more important matters, Color Out of Space adds plenty to the pantheon of weird Nicolas Cage moments.
[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=the-25-best-horror-movies&captions=true”]
But with how little the rest of the world seems to make sense after that meteorite comes down, weirdly, Cage’s lunacy feels right at home. A wacky Nic Cage performance is fine on its own, but what makes it doubly appreciated here is how it actively services Color Out of Space, adding to the constant unpredictability of the story’s turns. Richard Stanley knew exactly what he was doing putting Cage in the lead, and by channeling his energy into how the story unfolds, Stanley creates an atmosphere where nothing seems safe or reliable. That sense of dread is Color Out of Space’s heartbeat and it’s steady throughout. The other performers also benefit from the tone Cage’s performance sets, with Joely Richardson and Madeleine Arthur, in particular, getting the opportunity to lean into their gruesome moments with a similar kind of abandon. Richardson especially gets to have fun with some prosthetic-related gags, with one truly horrifying sequence of body horror coming late in the film.
Color Out of Space is less successful when it strays away from the Gardner farm. Hydrologist Ward Phillips (Elliot Knight) stumbles onto some of the effects of the Color and checks in on the Gardners now and again, but as the family disintegrates, Ward’s action takes place mostly back in the city. When things really hit the fan, his theories and attempts to involve the police are distracting, especially as we know just how pointless his efforts are in the face of the Color’s awesome power. Color Out of Space burns slowly to begin with and the aimless B-story never quite makes the case for its own inclusion.
