Capturing the stories of HP Lovecraft to film can be a challenge. Director Stuart Gordon probably did it best with his movies “Re-Animator”, “From Beyond” and “Dagon” but others have stumbled with unwieldy adaptations hooked around Lovecraft’s particular brand of cosmic horror.
“Color out of Space” does a decent job. I don’t think I ever read the original short story (and I’ve read a lot of Lovecraft), but it details the arrival of an alien presence that descends on a quiet hamlet, bringing terror in its wake. All of this carries over into the film, where Nicholas Cage’s Nathan is the patriarch of a family running an alpaca farm somewhere in the northeast (the region of much of Lovecraft’s lore.)
The catch with the story was that the color that signifies the alien presence was essentially indescribable. (To quote a passage, it was “only by analogy that they called it a color at all.”) How does one bring such a thing in life to film, as opposed to writing, where the author can leave it to the reader’s imagination? The movie utilizes an onslaught of kaleidoscopic, hallucinatory, and surrealist effects. I really wish I’d watched this on a large movie theater screen.
Beyond that, there is some horror to be found. After the light’s arrival, mysterious plants flower and human and animal inhabitants of the land slowly go mad. The fate of two characters in particular is grueling scene of body horror that makes me think the creators of “The Substance” might have seen this film.
But the plot is a little too predictable (admittedly, the story was written in 1927). Weird thing arrives, strangeness ensues and, well, you know where this is heading. There’s a visually stunning climax full of Sturm und Drang but it all feels a bit familiar.
Nick Cage is given ample room to do his thing, screaming and writhing his face in fury.
At the end, the requisite saddened and wizened Lovecraft narrator, now aware of the dismal reality of the universe, contemplates all the terrors that have been wrought and all the terrors to come.
