Color Out Of Space (2019)
a review by Evan Landon
"...and over all the rest reigned that riot of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow of cryptic poison from the well—seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scintillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and unrecognisable chromaticism."
"The Colour Out Of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft, March 1927
That's right, this movie is based off one of Lovecraft's finest short stories from nearly a century ago and completely holds up to this day! Whilst I have a tendency to talk about movies that are somewhat campy and silly in a poor attempt at comedy or lampooning certain lackluster films, I felt the need to talk about a movie I truly enjoyed by an author I adore. Enter this 2019 science fiction body horror from director Richard Stanley in his first film outting since the 1996 debacle, The Island Of Dr. Moreau starring a bored Marlon Brando and an incensed Val Kilmer.
The movie was released almost a year ago to the day of Nicolas Cage's film, Mandy, to which it is compared to quite heavily, although in my opinion are very different. Both star Nicolas Cage, are of the cosmic horror genre, & make substantial use of bright, vivid colors. In fact, magenta is used specifically in this movie because of how it is described in the short story as falling outside anything in the range of the visual spectrum. The color magenta, itself, is a construct of our brains to assess red & blue in the color spectrum that no wavelength of light can manufacture, so our brains imagine it as it is not an actual color. Cool, huh?! You learn something new every once in a while here on Villainous Cinema!
Back to the story, the movie is almost exactly like the acclaimed short story, aside from the names, the body horror, the daughter's experimentation with the Necronomicon (also a Lovecraftian device), and Nic Cage's obsession with alpacas that I found peculiar. In the end, it didn't hurt the film in the least bit. Lovecraft's tale is so streamlined and well told that anything Stanley added only made it better. Joely Richardson plays Cage's wife who suffers quite possibly the worst fate in the film (see body horror reference) whom I recognized immediately from another one of my fave movies, Event Horizon. Tommy Chong also makes an appearance as, you guessed it, a stoned hippie. Believe it or not, Elijah Wood was also an executive producer on this film.
Unfortunately, like Mandy, this film made round about the same $1 million against a $6 to $10 million budget, making it a box office failure. Fortunately, however, Stanley's return to directing will be followed up by another Lovecraft adaptation, The Dunwich Horror which I very much look forward to.
This one might not be one to show grandma, but it is a must for any fan of well thought out storytelling from one of the masters. The beautiful scenery and insane body horror doesn't hurt neither. Y'know how much I love that shit.
4 out of 5