Color Out of Space

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🎙️ EPISODE 434: 03.31.22 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 15. To say nothing of the Lovecraft short story this is based on — and I mean literally nothing as I don't care to look it up and certainly not read it — there seems to be a built-in divide when one tries to adapt some olden days thing in a modern setting. You can't jam climate change into the narrative of some 1927 Lovecraftian horror. You can maybe jam family dynamics revolving around a move to the country from the hustle & bustle of the big city and/or matriarch of said family's mastectomy, but you probably shouldn't. Richard Stanley was fired as the director of the 1996 Marlon Brando/Val Kilmer film The Island of Dr. Moreau one week into filming. And he waited — perhaps he toiled — as over twenty years passed between then and the release of this. He paid his dues. He was patient. And then finally, after all that time, he got to make feature-length film with an actor who decided to talk like this...

That is not Cage's voice throughout the picture. As his "character" spirals into an increasing psychosis spurred on — naturally — by the purple meteorite which landed on his lawn one night, the "actor" decides to go in and out of VOICES. Look Dad's doing a bit! Look Dad's doing a bit. Dad is a doing a bit, folks. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Color Out of Space (or if you want the full Lovecraftian, COLOUR out of space) is a sci-fi—horror that, when it hits horror modes, stays there, unfortunately, and the audience can only ruminate on what might have been. No seriously, what might have been... the plot, the motivation, character arcs, Tommy Chong's cat. We begin on the shores of a lake in very rural Massachusetts. What if I told you Lovecraft was just a goth Masshole? (I would never do such a thing.) Cage's daughter is doing some kind of Wiccan Witch Ceremony with her mother's hair when she's interrupted by a guy who works for the local government, there to see about some soil. This is Soil Guy...


Soil Guy also serves as the bookend narrator and **SPOILER!** only character that survives. There is nothing more to his character besides soil. His job is soil and his job is his life. He is Soil Guy.

The first fifteen minutes or so are dedicated to showing this family's life. Sure, they're a bit dysfunctional — teen brother likes to hit that ganja, Cage likes his bourbon, they have a loyal wolf-ass looking dog, etc — but down deep they really love each other, and they like having fun...


There we get the first inkling that, yes, we will be getting Unhinged Cage™ for this performance. Now, typically I am a fan of this version of Cage. For the most part, I fully support him when he derails a film to do weird things with his voice and body. But this was perhaps the first time in 15 films where the schtick kinda didn't work for me. I think it's mostly due to the juxtaposition of all the extremely gross horror stuff happening around it (which we'll get to). Nevertheless, if you're a fan of Unhinged Cage™ no matter the context or capacity, then this is the movie for you, my friend.

Then, just as Cage and his wife are boning for the first time since her breast cancer, the property is "attacked" by a purple light/energy that we learn was caused by a supposed meteor crashing on their front lawn near the well...


None of that looks BAD per say. Bathing everything in neon pinks and purple has become a fairly stale device at this point, especially in genre films, but Stanley is accomplished enough to make it look nice. It's fine. The next day, Soil Guy shows up with the Sheriff and the Mayor, and Cage gets extremely T.M.I. before basically admitting that he doesn't know The Color Purple...


Then it's time to milk the alpacas!


Like most of the proposed thematic threads, it barely registers any meaning, but there does seem to be a motif with boobs here: the breast cancer, the milking, later the mom will lap up water from a bowl like a kitten drinking milk (we'll get to that ugh). But nothing ever REALLY connects, so the movie is pure surface level. And while that's not automatically a bad thing, it struggles with some pretty simple movie stuff. For example, Cage tells Soil Guy that someone else lives on the property: a squatter named Ezra played by Tommy Chong. And he tells him basically, "good luck trying to talk to him, though." So for a second I though, OK maybe Tommy Chong is gonna break character to play a demented backwoods weirdo. But nope! He's just the same friendly, fun-loving weed freak hippie he is in every other thing he's ever been in...


So why did Cage say that about him? Did they envision the role as darker before casting Chong in the part? Whatever the reason, it's a flaw, and these flaws add up. Another example? While there, Soil Guy learns that the "H2O has gone a little brackish." But if you recall he was testing the area BEFORE the meteor strike. So what caused this? Was that an entirely separate issue, just an almighty coincidence to place this character on the scene? Heaven forbid.

Next, some weird stuff happens with Soil Guy's truck during a lightning storm, purple flowers start sprouting around the well, and a local news crew shows up to document the event only the meteor has mysteriously vanished. When the family is watching the newscast later that evening, mother completely chops off two of her fingers as she's slicing carrots...


New that's the first real sniff that this is more horror than sci-fi (I cover the discrepancy in more detail on the audio review FYI). Cage takes his wife to the hospital to get her digits reattached, leaving the two teen kids in charge of their little bro. And then everything goes fully batshit, completely off the rails. They can't reach their parents by phone (it all just sounds like garbled shouting and static), the teenagers start to hallucinate pretty hardcore as time and space start getting blurry, and the purple starts to infect the fauna as well as the flora, as little brother meets an adorable purple alien praying mantis mutant by the well...


Again, not the best I've ever seen, but definitely serviceable; the bug-o-vision especially looked pretty cool. Soil Guy returns to warn them not to drink the water (little late, dude!) but teen daughter is too busy vomiting and overflowing the kitchen sink with purple blood-like liquid. Shit be getting cray. We see a now shirtless Tommy Chong one more time (in the flesh at least) and he delivers some cryptic dialogue about his missing and cat and (maybe?) what's happening...


What IS happening? Ah, wouldn't you like to know! Look elsewhere, I suppose, as you won't be finding that out here. Cage and wife finally return home from the hospital and he proceeds to freakout (as seen in the first clip above) and he's singing opera in the car for some reason before almost running over Chong's cat, which is now a purplish mutant freak...


There's more and more purple plants about as Cage — who's developed a gnarly, scaly skin rash — goes out to the garden to harvest tomatoes and peaches! ...


YOU DO THAT VERY WELL, TRACY PEACH. We might never know if that line was in the script or improvised, but just for the record, I don't think it means ANYTHING...


Look, the performances here are erratic and that's putting it lightly, but I think a larger issue is the writing. It feels like all the dialogue was an afterthought. Richard Stanley's only concern was for the spooky horror and sci-fi stuff it seems. Every interaction plays like a Lifetime Channel original, only with more Cage, of course. Much... more... Cage....



Yup, speaking of SLAM DUNKS, I think that's what you could call his performance in this! Cage starts to hit the bottle pretty hard as he scratches his extremely fucked up skin and watches a news report on climate change (which: I can't even...) Then it's night time again and weird shit starts happening... again. The teen daughter looks at her Necronomicon book. The TV is purple static. Little kid is wandering around aimlessly. It's at this point that I think back to the very beginning and how sus that opening scene with the daughter doing witch stuff by the water felt. Well, now she's doing a full-on self-harm blood seance ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


The two brothers are wandering out by the alpaca stable and discover that the alpacas have mutated and fused together into monster freak alpacas and then a purple lightning bolt hits the mom and youngest kid and THEIR bodies fuse together into a single disgusting fucked up being...


So yeah, this is the part of the movie where all logic escapes without a trace. You (meaning: me) just strap in and try to enjoy the ride. And I did TRY. But nearly FIVE STRAIGHT MINUTES of that mom-child hybrid creature whimpering and gurgling was too much for me. Here's just a taste for you, dear reader. Not a treat, but what is the complete opposite of a treat...


Not sure what was worse there: the gross sounds or the desperate failure to insert something resembling exposition. Anyway, Cage tries to go get help but the car won't start...


...so he kills the alpaca monster squad instead...


This is when mom drinks from a bowl like a kitten and it might be the most disturbing part of the movie. Cage is right to contemplate killing her despite his daughter's misgivings...


But he doesn't do (just yet), and they share a sticky, slimy purple kiss...


YUCK! I really thought this was gonna be more of a cosmic psychological trip and not a horror movie freakout. But I was dead wrong! Meanwhile! The Sheriff brings some rogue alpaca mutant carcasses to City Hall to show to Soil Guy and he says "radiation?" Haha, nobody knows. The teens get the white horse from the beginning and I'm wondering just how all this works because the horse is barely afflicted, only has one purple eye, but it runs off nonetheless. They contemplate leaving the area on foot, but the son says they can't because it's "12 miles of ancient woodland" (??) I mean, there is a road they could follow and 12 miles isn't some impossible distance. What am I missing? Especially when the alternative is the hell they've just experienced, I think I'd take my chances with the 12 miles... But I digress (it's all I can do).

The teen son gets sucked into the well and we never see him again. Cage turns completely evil and locks the daughter in the attic with her mutant mother-brother monster combo...


The mom is now a giant spider monster with her son's face on her back. Not an ideal sitch for all parties imo. Sherrif and Soil Guy come and Cage is beyond delusional. He shoots spider mom and child...


Then the Sheriff shoots Cage and they go to Tommy Chong's cabin and he's dead, sitting there dead in a chair, as a machine plays a message he prerecorded. Tommy's head cracks open and a tree eats the Sheriff...


(We're almost done. Hang with me.)

Soil Guy finds teen daughter out by the well and she is Total Possessed-Ass Witch Mode and we briefly leave the movie for a different cartoon fantasy world movie, before Soil Guy reenters the house to find the family all sitting in the living room, Cage tries to kill him so he goes into the wine cellar, and then everything explodes in a giant purple boom. Check it out in double-time! ...


Cut to Soil Guy climbing out of the rubble of the house; everything is all white dust and smoky fog...


The movie ends with Soil Guy voice-over narrating some text straight from the Lovecraft (title drop) as he blasts a cig on a dam. Crazy he survived all that. Welp, that's the movie. Gotta go.

All things considered, I thought this was a pretty bad movie. The visuals are cool enough when they're aren't overly gross, but it never quite reaches the level of something I could recommend to folks who aren't Cage Completists like me.

Next up? A HARD LEFT turn. It's 1997's Con-Air, a movie I haven't watched since high school.

THE VERDICT: 5 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 433 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 435 ⫸

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Color Out of Space is a 2019 American science fiction Lovecraftian horror film directed and co-written by Richard Stanley, based on the short story "The Colour Out of Space" by H. P. Lovecraft. It stars Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, Elliot Knight, Madeleine Arthur, Q'orianka Kilcher and Tommy Chong. This is Stanley's only feature film since his firing from The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996).[9] According to Stanley, it is the first film in a trilogy of Lovecraft adaptations, which he hopes to continue with an adaptation of "The Dunwich Horror". It was released on September 7, 2019.