COLOR OUT OF SPACE (2019)

Studio:      RLJE Films
Director:    Richard Stanley
Writer:      Richard Stanley, Scarlett Amaris
Producer:  Daniel Noah, Josh C. Waller, Lisa Whalen, Elijah Wood
Stars:     Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, Madeleine Arthur, Brendan Meyer, Julian Hilliard, Elliot Knight, Josh C. Waller, Q’orianka Kilcher, Tommy Chong

Review Score:

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Summary:

Strange events plague a Massachusetts family after an unusual meteorite crashes on their remote farm.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

On an assignment to survey local groundwater, hydrologist Ward Phillips meets teenager Lavinia Gardner as the girl performs a pagan spell in the Arkham, Massachusetts woods to heal her mother’s cancer. Lavinia goes home to the isolated farm where she lives with her father Nathan, mother Theresa, stoner brother Benny, and younger brother Jack.

A meteorite crash-lands in the family’s yard during the night. Glowing lights emanate from the rock, entrancing Jack and gradually causing the other family members to behave oddly.

Mayor Tooma, Sheriff Pierce, and Ward Phillips come by the next day to examine the rock. Benny takes Ward to meet Ezra, an eccentric squatter who lives on the edge of the property, to discuss strangeness with the farm’s well water.

Lavinia becomes entranced by a thunderstorm that evening. Nathan observes the meteorite attracting lightning bolts.

While testing the farm’s well water at his makeshift tent lab, Ward receives a phone call filled with static and a strange voice. Something hidden in the trees draws Ward’s attention. Ward’s car and radio inexplicably start by themselves.

The meteorite vanishes. Nathan and Theresa notice flowers suddenly blooming by their well.

Theresa slices off two of her fingers while chopping carrots during a trance. Nathan rushes Theresa to the hospital, leaving their three kids home alone.

Lavinia sees Jack whistling at the well. Jack explains a man inside the well is talking to him. Jack later sees an insect creature hatch from the well’s bottom.

Lavinia takes several phone calls from her father, but hears only garbled noise. Lavinia envisions blood overflowing in the sink before suddenly falling ill.

Ward stops by the house to warn Lavinia that their well water appears to be contaminated. Lavinia oddly dismisses Ward. Ward observes Jack laughing with imaginary people as he leaves.

Ward revisits Ezra. Ezra plays Ward an audio recording of what he claims are aliens under the floor that came from the rock.

Nathan drives home with Theresa. Nathan nearly hits Ezra’s mutated cat when it startles him in the middle of the road.

Lavinia becomes entranced by static broadcast over Benny’s computer monitor. Benny tells his sister he somehow got lost outside and completely lost track of time. The teens receive another strange phone call. Lights flicker.

Nathan and Theresa return. Lavinia and Benny try telling their father about odd activity, but Nathan doesn’t believe their claims. Lavinia tells Benny they need to leave the farm after they observe their father flipping into an irritable, belligerent personality.

Nathan notices a rash growing on his arm while showering. Nathan also pulls a small jelly creature from the drain.

Nathan harvests unusually large fruits and vegetables out of season, but they all taste terrible. With their behavior growing stranger, Nathan and Theresa lose their tempers with each other. Nathan finds his arm continuing to transform and becomes entranced by static broadcast on television.

Lavinia uses the Necronomicon to cast a protection spell. She then carves bloody occult symbols all over her body.

Benny and Jack find the family’s alpacas mutating into grotesque creatures inside their barn. When Theresa comes outside to collect Jack, colored light emerges from the barn to envelop her and her son. Theresa and Jack fuse together and begin painfully morphing into a hybrid creature.

Nathan uses his shotgun to kill the transformed alpacas. Nathan moves to destroy the Theresa/Jack creature too, but instead locks it in the attic when he is unable to execute it.

Lavinia plots to flee the farm with Benny. However, cries from their missing dog Sam draw Benny to the well. Colored light sucks Benny into the well. Driven completely mad, Nathan captures Lavinia and locks her in the attic to feed Theresa.

Sheriff Pierce shows Ward the carcasses of mutated animals that a hunter found near the Gardner property. Pierce and Ward race to the farm.

Nathan hallucinates his dead and missing family members joining him inside the house. Upon arriving at the farm and finding Nathan behaving bizarrely, Pierce and Ward rush upstairs and see the Theresa/Jack creature attacking Lavinia. In a moment of clarity, Nathan shoots the creature before it can harm Lavinia.

Everyone goes outside. Colored light emerges from the well. Entranced once again, Nathan moves to shoot Ward. Pierce shoots Nathan before he can fire. Lavinia warns that the alien presence won’t let anyone leave the farm.

Ward and Pierce go looking for Ezra and find him as a withered corpse inside his shack. Ward and Pierce flee when Ezra’s corpse begins glowing. A mutated tree creature kills the sheriff. Ward runs back to the house.

Ward finds Lavinia entranced at the well. Lavinia’s eyes and forehead symbol glow. Ward envisions an alternate dimension while mesmerized. Lavinia dissipates into a colorful whirlwind that emerges from the well and funnels into the sky.

Inside the house, Ward inexplicably finds Nathan entranced and transforming along with his entire family. Ward flees into the basement as the colored light explodes and destroys the house.

Ward emerges from the rubble to find the farm reduced to ash. A dam is eventually built where the farm once stood. Ward vows to never drink the water now covering the property.

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Review:

Horror movies have several hard and fast rules that are guaranteed to result in terror or tragedy if they are ever broken. For example, never use magic to resurrect a dead loved one. Never f*ck with a house built on an ancient Indian burial ground. And never, ever touch a meteorite that crash-lands from outer space.

Just ask Jordy Verrill about that last one. Alternatively, you could ask The Gardner Family of Arkham, Massachusetts.

In between random cutaways to alpacas outside in their barn, shots of alpacas being milked, sudden discussions about alpacas, and other indulgences in an unusual obsession with, you guessed it: alpacas, opening scenes in “Color Out of Space” overextend our thorough introduction to The Gardners. Quietly quirky patriarch Nathan (Nicolas Cage) leads the farming family. Suffering from cancer in a B-story of only minor import (a trait shared by all of the movie’s underdeveloped asides), Nathan’s wife Theresa (Joely Richardson) maintains modernity by running an online stock trading business out of their humble country home.

Daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) takes misfit teen fascination with witchcraft to new levels by performing private pagan rituals pulled from the Necronomicon (the Simon paperback, for some reason). Her stoner brother Benny (Brendan Meyer) spends so much time puffing pot, he can barely be counted on to tend to his alpaca wrangling duties (seriously, these animals feature almost as much as the meteorite miasma). Nathan and Theresa’s youngest son Jack (Julian Hilliard from “The Haunting of Hill House”) brings up the back end as the primary person for regularly falling into color-induced trances.

Topping off the low octane fuel tank of moderately charming but mostly casual personalities are Tommy Chong as eccentric squatter Ezra and Elliot Knight as hydrologist Ward Phillips. Ward’s assignment to assess local groundwater conditions leads to a little flirting when he meets Lavinia in the woods. Their potential romance withers as fast as every other subplot thanks to a script whose sunlight shines only on an overall macabre mood instead of on narratives. A sheriff and a mayor are also included, although the latter fulfills such little function, you’re liable to forget she exists.

After all of that exposition, an oddly illuminated space rock burns a big hole in the farm’s front yard. “Strange” soon starts describing the family’s transformative behavior along with surrounding events that gradually turn everyone’s lives inside out. That essentially sums up “Color Out of Space.” Expectations for a substantial story should be dialed down to nil. But if you’re intrigued by repeated sequences of people becoming mesmerized by colored lights, this film will fill your thermos to overflowing with scene after scene of someone staring into a disco dystopia.

My initial notes on “Color Out of Space” leaned toward simply calling it “weird.” That’s not really the most accurate descriptor for the movie’s style though. I don’t want to imply that it’s David Lynch-like, overly interpretive, heavy on arthouse aesthetics, or even hypnotic necessarily. I don’t think it’s quite bizarre enough to be any of those things.

“Unusual” fits better. “Color Out of Space” is a film that is merely “off” in its own unique way, which shouldn’t be a revelation for anyone intimate with the work of co-writer/director Richard Stanley, his headlining star, or projects produced under the Spectrevision label.

For instance, dialogue is oddly written. When authorities question Nathan about the meteorite’s landing, he begins by recounting inessential details from that evening, mentioning how he and his wife were having sex for the first time in six months. Why does he specify this? For the comedic value perhaps. “Color Out of Space” definitely has a sense of humor that intentionally streaks it with vague camp value. But factor in this kind of comment with all that alpaca talk and you’ll start to sniff Stanley’s strange nose for what askew content he deems critical to conversations.

Whether we’re talking about a shot of Nathan selecting a wine bottle from the basement or sudden inserts of Benny’s water glass, you’ll constantly cock an eyebrow at quizzical creative choices without consciously realizing why. Again, everything seems somewhat sideways in a manner that might make the movie look roughshod if not for the fact that professional talents presumably knew what they were doing, even if the audience does not.

On the other hand, you will consciously recognize weirdness with unfortunately annoying audio design. Screeching squeals that sound like delivery trucks with bad brakes (I live on a hill where I hear this sound daily – and paused the movie in more than one place to be sure the noise wasn’t coming from outside) perpetually permeate the soundtrack. The omnipresent aural assault clearly means to be discomforting, although it’s just as likely to make you reach for a handful of Excedrin.

I may have mentioned elsewhere that I’m not someone who “gets” the ironic entertainment appeal of Nicolas Cage doing one of his trademark turns into a live-action cartoon. Yet I understand that people seem to enjoy watching him hammily yell about bees or whatever. Should you belong to that contingent that gets giddy at Nic Cage doing Nic Cage shtick, then the last half of the movie at least gives up the goods when the Oscar winner channels some kind of indeterminate accent to Hulk out with an even crazier incarnation of his character. It’s a goofy gag that further rattles “Color Out of Space” on already wobbly rails. But I suppose that floats the boats of those who want to see Stanley plus Cage equal wild, even though that W should be turned upside down when referencing the movie’s weirdness.

Personally, I prefer solid storytelling over oblique atmosphere, or at least some acceptable balance between the two. “Color Out of Space’s” ratio decidedly favors the latter. A richer plot with panache to complement cool creatures and psychedelic CGI might have left a longer lasting impression. “Color Out of Space” settles for being a fleeting fantasy founded on fussy family dynamics and ambling dreaminess instead of being truly rooted in high stakes cosmic horror.

Review Score: 55

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