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Cast

Nicolas Cage
as Nathan Gardner

Joely Richardson
as Theresa Gardner

Madeleine Arthur

Brendan Meyer
as Benny Gardner

Julian Hilliard

Elliot Knight

Q'Orianka Kilcher

Tommy Chong

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Critic Reviews for Color Out of Space

Audience Reviews for Color Out of Space

• Mar 20, 2020

  Colour Out of Space was one of the biggest joys that 2019 cinema brought me. I was genuinely thrilled by it from about fifteen minutes in right up until the credits rolled. Not to mention for several days afterwards.
  Gimly M Super Reviewer
• Mar 04, 2020

  Richard Stanley hit the scene with the cult gem Hardware and was primed for big things with The Island of Dr Moreau, but sadly Val Kilmer destroyed that dream. I honestly feel Stanley would've knocked The Island of Dr Moreau out of the park. But, like all gifted filmmakers, they tend to find their feet, and that's the case here. Color Out of Space is an incredibly cerebral experience and right up there with some of my favourite films of the year. Nicolas Cage is quite tame early on, but with all solid Cage performances he gets the opportunity to dial it up to 11. This film is utterly insane and with Stanley now demonstrating his ability for the genre, I only hope he can return much sooner. The film won't appeal to everyone, but if you're a fan of the genre, stop reading this review and track it down. 03/03/2020
  Brendan N Super Reviewer
• Feb 29, 2020

  THE FAMILY THAT STICKS TOGETHER - My Review of COLOR OUT OF SPACE (3 1/2 Stars) Nicolas Cage and the word "bonkers" have formed a pact in so many films, they both have achieved National Treasure status We love a film that goes off the rails, especially when it features Cage unhinged. Pair him with Richard Stanley, a notoriously offbeat personality himself who hasn't directed a feature film in decades, in an adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft short story, and you have a sci-fi/ body horror must-see. Be warned. This is pretty gruesome stuff, thus we have an instance here where the meek shall not inherit. Cage's Nathan Gardner lives on an idyllic farm outside the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts. He grows fruit and raises alpacas while his wife Theresa (Joely Richardson) works from home as a Commodities Trader as she recovers from breast cancer. Their three children cover the bases from Wiccan teen Livinia (Madeleine Arthur), stoner son Benny (Brendan Meyer) and the precocious, bespectacled child Jack (Julian Hilliard) and they all have an emotionally astute dog named Sam. They also have an old hippie squatter, Ezra, living in a shack on their property. The fact that Tommy Chong plays him would typically feel out of place, but between the South American camelids, the witchcraft ceremonies, and Cage being Cage, Chong feels like a subtle choice. When a young hydrologist, our narrator, named Ward (Elliot Knight) arrives to survey the land for a dam project, fate hands him and the Gardners a strange glowing pink meteorite which lands in their front yard one night. Of course no good could come from such an alien presence, but the slow burn at the heart of this film explores the psychological powers it holds over the family instead of what could easily have turned into a War Of The Worlds scenario. One by one, the Gardners lose their minds and then some with Cage delightfully transitioning from mild-mannered Dad to dashboard pounding, shrieking psycho within the course of the second act. In this stage of the film, their rural idyll goes haywire. Richardson, in particular, rises to the occasion with her fraught-filled arc of a cancer survivor who barely catches her breath before things grow far more dire. The stunning scene in which everything changes for her drew audible gasps from the audience, myself included. Almost everybody feels the effects of this pink invader as it changes brains, bodies, and even the landscape. The final acts lost me with its jumbled storytelling and inability to tie everything together. Still, it manages to deliver many disturbing body horror images in the David Cronenberg tradition. Some moments brought to mind The Thing and Altered States. Those who can't tolerate multiple gross-outs should steer clear. Despite the many references to other filmmakers, Stanley's return feels welcome, since he puts his own unique stamp on things. Instead of starting out at eleven, Cage modulates his performance well. Yes, eventually gallons of blood get splattered all over the place and people get reduced to wheezing, bubbly blobs, but don't we want that in our heady exploitation movies? Although no home run, Color Out Of Space swings for the fences and earns my respect.
  

  Glenn G Super Reviewer
• Jan 25, 2020

  Color Out of Space is based on one of the short stories by famous horror author H.P. Lovecraft, but what's even more noteworthy is that this is the first feature film from director Richard Stanley in 24 years. Stanley made a name for himself with early 90s gory cult movies Hardware and Dust Devil. Hollywood came calling and he was given directing duties on 1996's The Island of Doctor Moreau, a production so plagued with troubles that Stanley was fired, replaced with John Frankenheimer, and then Stanley disguised himself and snuck onto the set again as one of the animal-human hybrids. There's a fascinating documentary about the whole disastrous clash called Lost Soul that's well worth watching for any fan of behind-the-scenes exposes (it would make a great double-feature with 2002's Lost in La Mancha). Stanley has never been a man to put on airs about the material he gravitates to. He likes weird genre stories, and as a lover of weird genre stories, I'm glad to see that the man has broken from his sabbatical. Color Out of Space is a mostly successful, eerie, and occasionally stomach-churning little horror movie, and hopefully its release will make it that much easier for Stanley to deliver the next one. A strange meteor crashes into the family estate of the Gardners. The parents, Nathan (Nicolas Cage) and Theresa (Joely Richardson), are struggling to make life "in the sticks" work with their family. Mom is trying to advise stock portfolio clients. Dad is tending to their prized alpacas. A land surveyor (Elliot Knight) is testing the drinking water and its safety after the meteor hits. Strange things begin to happen almost immediately. Young son Jack (Julian Hillard) is hearing voices and talking to an entity living in the well. Bright explosions of pink color come and go, followed by an oppressive cloud of static. And the animals are behaving differently, gaining pink glows in their eyes, and becoming more violent and deranged and dangerous. This is the kind of movie that you want to be weird, unpredictable, and terrifying, and Color Out of Space achieves these desires with a florid, downright Cronenbergian relish. There are several kinds of horror movies here mashed together, which don't fully gel as a whole but it does exacerbate the overall effect of how screwed these characters are. There's the cosmic invasion/outbreak angle with small weird changes going around the environment, from pink-hued flowers spreading to the bizarre effect it has on the wildlife. There's a descent into insanity angle as the parental figures seem most affected and are tearing away the security of the kids. Cage's character seems to be mentally slipping into his grandfather's snitty persona, either implying mental illness, some degree of ghostly resurrection, or just general creeping madness. There's the alien nature of being able to trust your own senses and body, as characters will lose hours of time in the blink of an eye and not be fully cognizant of their own actions. There's the isolation of the invading force shutting down escape routes, blocking telephone calls (anyone want to try texting?), and trapping the family inside this hot zone. And then there's the body horror as creatures begin physically merging together in nauseating displays that conjure the best/worst of the nightmares from John Carpenter's The Thing. Stanley elects to build the horror and then dwell on it. There's a scary development with a specific pair of characters, and Stanley lets the unknown of what will happen, as long as the dread of what seems to be happening, make it worse. He punctuates this moment with some gut-churning cries of anguish that run on a loop, to the point that you might be thinking yourself whether a merciful death was advisable. To the film's credit, it switches back and forth between these different threats and alternating styles of horror. It allows a movie with a limited plot (meteor hits, bad things happen) to feel bigger. A draw for any lower budget indie horror movie starring middle-aged Nicolas Cage is the desire to see the gonzo actor unleashed. You get tiny glimpses early, with his off-key line deliveries that might incite a few giggles. It's halfway through where he starts to crack, breaking into an effete British accent, gesticulating more wildly and theatrically with his hands, and then breaking into protracted screaming fits. His references to the alpacas got some genuine goofy laughs out of me, as does passing moments where it feels like he's channeling John Travolta in his performance style. The cult of Crazy Cage that found much to love with 2018's moody Mandy should find extra enjoyment levels with Color Out of Space. These Cage-isms don't detract from the movie or rip you out of the reality because it's all about disintegration, mental and physical, so deploying Nicolas Cage losing it actually better serves the film's cracked tone. Being a Lovecraftian horror adaptation, there is some leeway to be had for its incoherence. We're dealing with a life form that defies our understanding by its inter-dimensional nature. Some of this will be mitigated simply by having to transpose Lovecraft's more ethereal concepts into a functional visual medium. Characters call the strange incidents a "color, it's only a color" but it's not really just a color when you turn that literal concept into a movie. On the page, you can get away with something more obscure and abstract, but movies require a visualization, and so the "monster" of the film isn't "just a color" but essentially a sentient neon energy cloud. I was reminded frequently of 2018's Annihilation, a movie I admired but was indifferent to, just like its intended lesson about nature's relationship to man's existence. It's a takeover that defies explanation because our puny human brains aren't capable of perceiving what is happening. Therefore, when weird nonsense happens, we don't need a tidy explanation. The breakdown of the family unit, both figuratively and literally, is enough to anchor our attention. We might not know why these things are happening but they are destroying this family slowly like an infection, and we're watching them break down one-by-one, and that's what matters. As the movie started picking up momentum and getting weirder and grosser, I wondered what possible ending could even be presented that might work. I think Stanley finds a workable solution that mostly suffices. Nobody wants to be in the business of explaining too much and damaging the reality of the movie (see: Us) but you still want to provide some set of rules, even if the larger picture is an incomprehensible design. Color Out of Space keeps things relatively vague but keeps to the few clues it offers, which at least makes the overall production feel forgivably vague. There are elements I wish Stanley had fleshed out further or curtailed more. The supporting authority figures are mostly empty suits, including the willfully ignorant mayor running for re-election played by Q'orianka Kilcher, if you're curious what she's been up to since playing Pocahontas in 2005's The New World. They don't even qualify as "characters here just to be killed gruesomely later." Then there are interesting personal aspects to the Gardners that deserved more integration into the story, like the teen daughter's (Madeleine Arthur) interest in Wiccan spells and unorthodox spiritual practices. What does she fully believe? She's trying to tap into something elemental to spare her mother, who is a recent cancer survivor who lost both breasts to the disease. When her husband begins to get physically intimate, she pauses, expressing that she doesn't know if she still feels like herself, or desirable, after her surgery and recuperation. This is meant to serve as a launching pad for the body horror that will arrive later, with the mother already feeling violated by an entity, but it feels like something that should be more integral to the demonstration of the character than her angry demands to get the wi-fi fixed. Tommy Chong appears very briefly as an aged hippie living on the Gardner estate, and I wish that the movie had more to do for him besides slotting him as more or less Neighbor #1. For fans of Lovecraft, indie horror, body horror, Nicolas Cage, practical effects, atmosphere, and even Stanley's past titles from long ago, there's something to enjoy with Color Out of Space. It's a movie that can get under your skin on its own terms, even if I wanted it to go deeper at points. It's the right kind of airy atmosphere, switching styles and horror threats to keep things interesting, as well as not overstaying its welcome. It uses confusion and curiosity to its sneaky advantage and Stanley finds new ways to make old genre tropes still feel spooky. It's nothing revelatory but Color Out of Space is a fitting visual translation of Lovecraft's elemental nightmares and madness-inducing chaos. I don't think it will take Stanley another 24 years before another production decides to take a chance on his next directing effort. Nate's Grade: B
  Nate Z Super Reviewer

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