The Colour Out Of Space - 2019!
When I heard this Color Our of Space movie was out there my first thought was a smile because it was a new film featuring a favorite story of a favorite writer and my second thought was revealed in a grimace when I realized Nicholas Cage was the star. The last thing a Lovecraft story needs is a fucking movie star, and especially one capable of bombast on the scale of Cage. So I was pleasantly surprised when the movie began and Cage was well hidden behind some big glasses and his jowls and hairline suggested an older man with element of empathy. He was confined and restrained and I had high hopes this movie might not fall victim to his overwhelming personality. It didn't make it.
Aside from Cage, the movie boasts that it's the first film by Richard Stanley in over twenty years since he was booted off the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, the dreadful one with Marlon Brando. Stanley himself in the behind-the-scenes interviews looks like an evil hobo with his greasy long black hair under an omnipresent hat (the universal sign of male pattern baldness) and a pencil thin mustache straight out of The Perils of Pauline. But all that aside the direction of the movie is spotty as well.
The producers claim to want to make an authentic Lovecraft movie and like almost all of them utterly fail to do so. For one thing we have inserted into this movie the infamous Necronomicon and puzzling pagan rites which I guess are to say something about a young girl's attempts to control her world, but really are just artifacts inserted because a casual Lovecraft fan considers them essential. Since the C'Thulhu Mythos really have nothing to do with The Colour Out of Space it's nonsense to cross the streams this way. There are also echoes of other Lovecraft tales such as The Whisperer in the Darkness. I think Stanley wanted to remake John Carpenter's The Thing (poor poor llamas) while he was at it, another tangential property on the outskirts of "Lovecraftville".
Lots of influences for what should be a simple story of a family's dissolution in the face of an enigmatic force from outer space. The need in modern horror movies for rambunctious action hurt any attempts at atmosphere in a movie is at its best when the kids are trying to hear and see the things which are just beyond their senses. It's moody and builds good tension but almost always the payoff is a classic dumb scare right out of the well-worn bag of modern horror cliches. At least the black guy doesn't die first in this one.
Stanley made some noise about making The Dunwich Horror, and while I think his sensibilities are better suited to that project, I can't say I'm much eager to see whatever he cobbles up.
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I'm a Lovecraft fan too but I have to disagree with your review as I quite enjoyed this film overall. I liked the inclusion of Arkham (Kingsport, Dunwich and Innsmouth are also mentioned on a weather report) and Miskatonic University (which was printed on the hydrologist's T-shirt). The appearance of The Necronomicon is, however, harder to justify as that book is supposed to be so dangerous that only a handful of copies exist but in this film Ms. Gardener has a paperback version!! By the way, my DVD doesn't include any behind-the-scenes interviews.
ReplyDeleteVery glad you enjoyed it -- I'm happy to have seen it. And despite my last sentence I'd likely watch whatever that team comes up with. The background stuff is pretty boiler plate self-congratulatory stuff for the most part, though the director is an odd bird. About a half hour or so as I recollect. That Necronomicon paperback is actually one I have around here. I got the sense from its presence that this was a world in which the literary Lovecraft existed alongside this modern version of the horror, but that's speculation. I do agree that the name checks are all there and I approve.
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