COLOR OUT OF SPACE (2019)

 WELCOME BACK, RICHARD STANLEY!  

One of my favourite authors is H.P. Lovecraft.  I probably first read one of his stories when I was a kid back in the 1970s in an anthology here or there.  There's a good chance I read something like THE OUTSIDER or RATS IN THE WALLS but certainly nothing from the so-called "Cthulhu Mythos" stories until many years later in the mid-1980s when I was in college.  I bought and read "The Best of H.P. Lovecraft":  this one, in fact. 

I fell in love immediately with every story and quickly bought up all the HPL I could find.  To this day, my favourite Lovecraft story is probably THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE (or else THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH sometimes).  I'll tell you honestly COLOUR freaked me out enough that for months after reading it, I was uneasy being under the nighttime sky.  I was genuinely creeped out and if that ain't an example of some terrific writing, I don't know what is.  But how can you film COLOUR?!?!?  When a strange meteor falls out of the sky and lands on Nahum Gardner's farm, the story explains that "colour" emerging from it is not a colour at all; that's just the nearest word that approximates whatever it is.  How do you depict something like that on the screen; something that's totally indescribable?  In fact, that's the difficulty with most of Lovecraft's stories; almost all of them contain something that is "indescribable" so how do you film it?  That's why all Lovecraft stories are nearly impossible to adapt to film.  COLOUR has been adapted several times already:  the Boris Karloff starrer DIE, MONSTER, DIE, the Wil Wheaton starrer THE CURSE and the 2010 DIE FARBE.  Of all these, the latter film is the most successful.  But here we have Richard Stanley, the "cursed" Richard Stanley, returning to make his first feature film in a couple decades and having been nearly destroyed by his experiences on THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU.  And what does he make as his return to the director's chair?  A nearly unfilmable Lovecraft film!  I can only congratulate him on his success!

There are quite a few differences between COLOR OUT OF SPACE and the original story.  For one thing, it takes place in the present.  This, I think, works in the film's favour as it frees up the narrative from the constraints of a period piece and makes it more relatable.  There are also many things which are very true to the story as the film basically unfolds in the same way the story does.  We get the meteor being repeatedly struck by lightning, we get the well, we get the strangely humongous fruit and vegetables which don't taste good.  The one complaint I have with the movie is that we don't get the slow rot of everything then turning to a grey powder.  At least not until the very end.  But I miss the slow detereorization and would've liked to see the vegetation and the house slowly turning to grey dust.  Other than that, COLOR OUT OF SPACE does an admirable job of adapting Lovecraft and the sense of cosmic horror that was his specialty.  The cast is all excellent. 

Nicolas Cage thankfully gives an appropriate performance and lays off the VAMPIRE'S KISS/WICKER MAN shenanigans; he only resorts to a toned-down bonkers-ness when called for.  Joely Richardson is also great as Mrs. Gardner and makes a nice acting foil to Cage.  Elliot Knight as our narrator/hydrologist Ward Phillips is excellent as well and needs to get more acting work!  Madeleine Arthur, Brendan Meyer and Julian Hilliard are also quite good as the kids; although young Hilliard gives essentially the same performance he gave in THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE -- that is, standing outside staring at the "color" as he stood outside staring at ghosts in the Netflix series.  No biggie though -- he's a kid, he ain't Laurence Olivier!  Hell, even Tommy Chong is great as Ezra the squatter hippy hermit; playing it straight except for the humour which comes from the script itself.  This is quite a good stab at THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE and rates in the upper tier of HPL film adaptations to date.