It has been a very long 27 years since filmmaker Richard Stanley stepped behind the camera for his last narrative feature, and a whopping 27 years since his striking debut, the 1992 low-budget sci-fi movie Dust Devil. Stanley sticks to the genre for Color Out Of Of Space, a new movie based on the H.P. Lovecraft novel, one starring Nicolas Cage on top form as a father who has escaped to the country from the rat race of the city with his family for the quiet life. However, he gets quite the opposite when a mysterious meteor drops from above onto his farm.
Image provided by LFF
Nicolas Cage is having quite the renaissance in recent years. Despite showing up in some below-par direct-to-DVD action affairs, he’s also secured himself a spot in limelight once again in some serious off-beat genre pieces, a run that was topped by a magnificently bonkers turn in Panos Cosmatos psychedelic shocker-cum rousing revenge movie Mandy, a feature which played to delighted festival audiences starting at Cannes in the first half of 2018. Well, now Color Out Of Space can be added to the same string of films, a bright, bold vision of a science-fiction movie with Cage on top form as the father of a New England family who just wants some damn peace and quiet – and to grow some decent produce.
Cage is Nathan Garder, a fifty-something who has left the big bad city and headed to his father’s farm in the middle of the woods in rural New England for the quiet life. Along with him is his wife, Theresa, who faces daily battles in the attic-space home office striving to hold on to a career after overcoming a life-threatening illness. Then there’s their teenage daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) who we meet in the opening scene seemingly performing a pagan rite for her mother. There are also two brothers; toked up teenage troublemaker Benny (Brendan Meyer), and then the youngest of the brood, Jack (Julian Hilliard). All is going swimmingly, save the occasionally dodgy wifi connection and TV signal. That is, until, a glowing meteor falls from the heavens and lands in their garden, one which is there one day, and literally gone the next. Thinking they are out of danger, it seems that they are indeed far from it, the meteor’s arrival bringing with it some devastating side-effects on everything that was in its vicinity when it landed. The pets – everything from the dog to the three Alpacas in the barn are all behaving strangely, as too are the humans, and it is suspected that the water has been contaminated. Quiet is the last thing Nathan can expect as the full effects of the apparent visitor from out of space start to become more and more apparent as the plot progresses.
The burning question is as to whether Nicolas Cage gets to go nuts in this. The answer is clearly yes, of course. Stanley’s film starts off strong, an audacious sci-fi fare that slowly draws you into its utter madness. While not quite going as full-throttle as he did in Mandy, Cage gets to play with Nathan- an almost meshing of Red in the aforementioned and the titular ‘Dad’ in the previous year’s Mom and Dad. It’s all entertaining enough, but as the very tough-laced, almost incomprehensible plot unfolds, one can’t help but think that it runs out of steam by the end.
There’s a nice turn from Tommy Chong as the hermit who is squatting next door, and Joely Richardson gives a solid performance in the kind of film in which we don’t see her pop up in all that much. The young Madeleine Arthur as Lavinia is a true stand out, though in what looks like what could have been physically as well as an emotionally draining part to play.
Full of fantastic CGI, wonderfully staged practical effects – some very gory creature-like towards the end which’ll have you wincing away from the screen – Color Out Of Space is worth your time and effort. Just keep a very open mind.
Color Out Of Space is awaiting a release.
