The Blog Where Horror Dwells: Color Out of Space

As a wee young'un, I was an avid reader, especially of scary literature, but until I went off to college, I had never read H.P. Lovecraft's work. And what a transformative experience that turned out to be. For the first time since I was a kid, after a couple of marathon reading sessions, I found myself reluctant to turn the lights off at night. Lovecraft's best stories established an atmosphere of dread to which I related very personally — particularly in tales such as "Call of Cthulhu," "The Dunwich Horror," "The Whisperer in Darkness," "Haunter of the Dark," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "Dreams in the Witch House," "At the Mountains of Madness," and, of course, "The Colour Out of Space." At the time, it seemed the author had reached forward through the years to tweak my most personal "fear" nerves. The concept of unimaginable cosmic forces and intelligences that rendered humankind inconsequential, combined with the eeriness of geographic and personal isolation, affected me like no other works of dark fiction ever had.

Few filmmakers have successfully adapted Lovecraft's fiction for the screen. Stuart Gordon, with Reanimator, From Beyond, Dagon, and Dreams in the Witch House (from the Showtime series Masters of Horror), succeeded in capturing at least a smidgen of the source materials' respective essences. Some of the most impressive adaptations have been low-budget, independent efforts, such as The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness, and the German adaptation Die Farbe (The Color). I personally enjoy AIP's The Dunwich Horror (1970, directed by Daniel Haller) because it's a fun film, with a few enjoyable nods to the original story. However, one would be hard-pressed to argue that it's a truly worthy adaptation. AIP's Die, Monster, Die! (1965, also directed by Daniel Haller and starring Boris Karloff and Nick Adams), is ostensibly based on "The Colour Out of Space," though the liberties it takes with a story render the source material almost unrecognizable. Now, back in 1987, I wandered into a movie called The Curse, directed by David Keith, mainly because it was the only horror flick I could find at the cinema that weekend. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was, in fact, based on "The Colour Out of Space." This adaptation boasts a few effective moments, but beyond those, it is overall rather dreadful.

With 2019's Color Out of Space, director Richard Stanley takes on the task of adapting one of Lovecraft's most celebrated tales. In the original story, a meteor falls to earth, landing on a remote farm owned by Nahum Gardner. Soon, the family's well becomes the center of a kind of plague, which mutates plant life and — eventually — human beings. The alien force, which arrived on Earth via the meteorite, manifests itself as a kind of "indescribable colour," exhibiting properties more akin to atomic radiation than your typical marauding extraterrestrial. In the new film, Nahum Gardner becomes Nathan Gardner, played by Nicolas Cage. The Gardner family — Nathan, his wife Theresa (Joely Richardson), sons Jack (Julian Hillard) and Benny (Brendan Meyer), and daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) — has moved to a secluded farm outside of Arkham, MA. A hydrologist named Ward Phillips (Elliot Knight) arrives to survey the area in preparation for a planned hydroelectric dam. In the original story, the surveyor narrates the events years after the fact, while in the film, he becomes mostly an observer to the events as they happen. One may note with some satisfaction that Phillips is played by an African American, which might well have mortified Lovecraft, who wasn't exactly known for his appreciation of races other than Caucasian.

The plot generally follows Lovecraft's, with a slow, taut buildup as it becomes clear that the fallen meteorite is having a fairly nasty impact on the local environment. The produce from the family's garden grows too fast and too large, and proves inedible, to put it mildly. Insects and other specimens of the local wildlife mutate into barely recognizable life forms. And the members of the family begin to exhibit signs of having been infected by something exceptionally virulent.

It's no great spoiler to reveal that, true to your typical H.P. Lovecraft story, things in this film do not end well.

Not for anyone in the film, at least. For the audience, the slow, creeping storyline increases in velocity until it becomes a wild, runaway train. Now, Lovecraft is not known for his runaway trains, but in this movie, for the most part, the pacing works. It did take some time to warm up to the film. In the beginning, the Gardner family fails to engage, with young Lavinia not altogether convincingly playing the eccentric teenager, the rest of the gang falling somewhere between colorless and annoying. I've never been much of a Nicolas Cage fan, although his performance in Raising Arizona is nothing less than classic. However, once the "colour" manifests itself, it becomes easier to relate to the characters. Cage, far from annoying me, as he often has on film, becomes endearing. The occasional moments of humor come off as natural and genuine; rather ironic, since humor cannot be said to be one of Lovecraft's characteristic devices. A favorite scene is when a news crew interviews the Gardners at their home about the strange goings-on. As the camera focuses on a disheveled Nathan, who appears to have just crawled out of bed, he realizes his hair has gone completely awry. Here, amid the mounting grimness, he cries, "Could no one think to bring me a comb?" Lavinia, who aspires to be a white witch, owns a copy of the Simon Necronomicon. As a visual joke, it's subtle but amusing as hell, since the Simon Necronomicon really is a joke. The Gardners' neighbor is an octogenarian hippie named Ezra, aptly played by Tommy Chong. Not surprisingly, he has a few words of wisdom to offer about the cannabis plant.

Once the color overruns the farm in earnest, the cinematic spectacle becomes impressive. Now, since an "unidentifiable, imperceptible" color doesn't exactly play well on screen, what we have is a vivid, altogether lovely shade of violet/magenta. The lighting effects, the entire color palette of the film, evoke an atmosphere absolutely worthy of Lovecraft's most vivid descriptions. But beyond the visual eeriness, sounds from the Gardners' well indicate that there's more than just an innocuous, unidentifiable color at work. Squire Ezra makes a tape recording of the sounds, which he claims are living things moving underground.

As plant and animal life succumb to the warping influence of the color, imagery reminiscent of John Carpenter's The Thing abounds. One could rightly call it derivative, yet in the context of this film, it feels right. Like, maybe there could actually be some tenuous connection between these disparate properties. This was merely a passing thought I had while watching the film, but I rather enjoy indulging it.

It's to the film's credit that, after initially presenting a somewhat less-than-engaging family unit, the Gardners elicit sympathy — a sense that they are victims of a genuine tragedy, as opposed to a gaggle of obnoxious ciphers whom you cannot wait to see painted out of the picture. The fate that befalls Theresa and young Jack is grotesque, repulsive, yet strangely powerful. Moving, in its way. The middle act of the film does hit on all cylinders far more than it misses.

The same cannot necessarily be said of the final act. As the film hurtles toward its climax, the train comes dangerously close to derailing. Thankfully, it stays on the tracks, but only just. The visual effects finally hit overload stage, where everything that might have remained subtle comes on full bore. And as the film moves toward its resolution, finally, a little bit of the original, Lovecraftian mood, the eeriness, makes a brief and welcome return.

I suppose it's a small thing, but one of the most personally disappointing aspects of the movie was the absence of what I consider the original story's most striking imagery: the trees around the Gardner farm moving of their own accord, the tips of their branches blazing with the unearthly color. That image, rendered in the text so vividly yet so suggestive in its implications, struck me more deeply than any other in the tale. I kept hoping to see that money shot in the film. Alas, it never came. Also, I rather missed references to "The Blasted Heath," an epithet which, in the story, described the devastated remains of the Gardners' land.

Lovecraft's prose, overwrought as it might be, remains impressionistic. However grotesque or monstrous or lurid the events in his tales, his prose merely sketches the details for the reader. You never get Barker-esque descriptions of gore, or intimate, camera-eye views of screaming madness. More often, Lovecraft offers the reader an emotionally charged yet detached, distant narrator. Lovecraft suggests what your eyes should be seeing. He rarely describes it for you.

Stanley's movie shows you everything — and then some — that Lovecraft suggests.

So, Color Out of Space, while in most ways radically different from anything Lovecraft ever would have written, mostly succeeds as an adaptation of something he did write. The film's striking, atmospheric imagery — despite the absence of that money shot I wish had been there — creates a rare, convincing sense of the otherworldly. Until the finale, it doesn't hammer you with lurid CGI, which has become the bane of virtually every film with a single special effects shot. Over the course of the film, enough humor and tragedy come into play sufficiently to snuff that initial sense of ennui.

Yes, there's flaws aplenty in this film, yet, overall, it maintains a solidity (barely) that, for me, makes it a keeper. I'll rate Color Out of Space 3.5 out of 5 Damned Rodan Dirty Firetinis, with an extra hot pepper or two for good measure.