TIFF 2019 review: COLOR OUT OF SPACE nails H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic terror classic

H.P. Lovecraft’s stories have been notoriously difficult to bring to the screen. The master of cosmic terror often wrote about interstellar beings and forces beyond the scope of mankind’s comprehension, which poses a major challenge for a visual medium. Lovecraft’s 1927 short story The Color Out of Space is a pretty audacious work to turn into a film; the story focuses on a meteorite that strikes a farmer’s land, and the ensuing havoc that it brings. Soon enough after the crash the crops begin to go bad, animals being to mutate, and a strange colour surrounds the area of the crash, a mysterious colour that has never been seen by man before.

If anyone can bring that sense of mysterious dread to the screen it’s director Richard Stanley (Hardware), who has proven he’s willing to go as far into the deep end as possible to get what he needs for his film (see: the utterly fascinating documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau, which focuses on his last fiction feature before he was replaced during production some 20 + years ago). Here he’s teamed up with the similarly unpredictable Nicolas Cage, the sort of iconic genre duo that led to legions of fans salivating over a single image of the film that made the rounds before the film’s premiere at TIFF this week.

Stanley’s take on the Lovecraft tale is somehow even weirder than the source material. Opening with a voice-over straight from the text, Stanley places us directly in the remote region of the fictional town. Surrounded by wilderness, we meet the Gardner family: father Nathan (Nicolas Cage), mother Theresa (Joely Richardson), daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), and sons Benny (Brendan Meyer) and Jack (Julian Hiliard). Following the meteorite crash, the Gardners begin noticing changes around their property. New colourful plants begin taking over the land, electronic devices begin acting up, and Nathan seems to be the only one noticing a revolting scent, one so strong that he’s often driven to gagging. A young Hydrologist working in the area (Elliot Knight) begins warning the family to stay away from the water supply, while an elder hippy dippy recluse (a perfectly cast Tommy Chong) believes that aliens have infected the land.

As the infestation begins intensifying, Stanley holds nothing back. There are mutated dogs and Alapacas (don’t ask), and once the colour takes hold of the Gardners, the results are pretty sickening, with Cronenbergian levels of body horror. All of this is offset by Cage’s unhinged performance which turns into full-on camp mode as his terror increases. He adds a strange (British?) accent when he gets too worked up, and turns in one of his most manic roles since the decidedly wacky Vampire’s Kiss. You can look at his role here and claim he’s over-acting, or that he thinks he’s in a different movie than everyone else, but the whole point of the story is that he is losing his grasp on reality as the colour works its way through his body and mind; is it really so strange to think he would resort to a funny accent in the face of an otherworldly attack on his family?

Alongside Cage’s hysterics, much of the drama is heightened by Colin Stetson’s enveloping score, which slowly ratchets up the tension before becoming an all-out audio assault. The practical effects are also top-notch here, with realistic looking gore scenes and mutilations that bring to mind the work of classic SFX artists like Rick Baker. The digital and / or lighting elements used to portray the purplish colour are a little less successful, but taken as a whole, the film does a solid job of bringing the unimaginable to life in a convincing way.

It takes a lot to out-weird Lovecraft, but Stanley really pushes Color Out of Space deep into crazy territory. After being barraged by this film for nearly two hours, you might also feel your grasp on reality beginning to slip away. Just watch it if you suddenly start speaking with a British accent.

Color Out of Space will screen at Fantastic Fest and Beyond Fest this fall. No further release info has been announced yet.