I haven’t read a ton of H.P. Lovecraft, but I’ve read enough of his short stories to get a sense for his style and themes. From the Call of Cthulhu to At the Mountain of Madness I know that his cosmicism posits the human mind as a tiny fragile pea quickly destroyed (or dragged into insanity) in the face of the infinite horror of the cosmos. The fact that his father was admitted to a mental institution when Howard was just 3 years old, no doubt, must have had some influence on his imagination and writing for the rest of his life. Lovecraft is considered a significant influencer in the 20th century supernatural horror genre and saw a bit of a revival in books and films made in the late 2010 to early 2020s. 

Since Lovecraft is known for his “weird” fantasy, it should be no surprise to anyone that Nicolas Cage would throw his gonzo genius hat into the ring and take on a starring role in Color Out of Space (2019). It just fits his brand, and I, for one, found it to be a disturbingly fun ride. (My family members may disagree with my take on this. My wife fell asleep watching it and my 22 yo daughter asked “how much longer is this?” at one point about halfway through.)

But we’ll get into why I liked it and what it did well a little bit later. For now…

The Summary

Based on the short story by H.P. Lovecraft, this is a film about a meteorite that falls in a rural fictional area of the northeast on a very wooded piece of property where a family of five lives. 

The Gardner family has fled the busyness of the city for the simpler life on this farm in Arkham County–where they raise alpacas and are trying to make the most of a difficult situation. Nathan (Nicolas Cage) attempts to grow food and use the alpacas to help heal his wife Theresa (Joely Richardson) who is battling a severe form of cancer. Theresa seems to be supporting the family financially as a stock broker (I assume), working a remote job from the attic of their old Colonial family home. 

The Gardner children are all coping with their mother’s illness in varying ways. Teenaged Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) turns to Wiccan spells and death metal music for solace. Benny (Brendan Meyer), the older brother, escapes in his video simulations of space and smoking weed to get by, and Jack (Julian Hilliard) who is the youngest seems mostly unaware of his mother’s illness other than disliking his dad’s cooking. 

A young hydrologist and surveyor Ward (Elliott Knight) comes to the family’s farm to test the water quality in the area as he is helping to research for a new water reservoir / hydro-electric plant. 

Then one night a strange pink meteor falls to earth on the Gardiner farm. 

With the meteor comes a whole slough of strange changes to the environment, the drinking water, the floura and the fauna, and ultimately the psychology and behaviors of the family members and the natural world around them.  An eerie glow settles in and emanates from the meteorite. Electrical static from TVs, cell phones, and radios all start emitting garbled noises, and the animals all start to behave in erratic ways.

While cutting carrots in a fugue state, Theresa accidentally cuts off the tips of two of her fingers and Nathan must rush her to the hospital–leaving the children alone to fend for themselves in an increasingly dangerous situation. Things immediately start to shift. Theresa loses most of an entire day staring transfixed at a filling bloody sink. Benny gets confused and loses himself in a familiar forest after repeatedly trying to get the alpacas into their pen, and Jack talks to an invisible “friend” inside the well on their property as their dog, Sam, snarls and chases strange lights into the woods. 

Things go from weird to weirder and Ward is the only character in the tale who seems to suspect just how severely amiss the situation has become. He returns to the Gardner farm to warn the family that the water is contaminated and shouldn’t be consumed until the tests from the lab return. Ward ventures out to the squatter Ezra’s (Tommy Chong) cottage to warn him about the water as well and finds him listening through headphones to strange static frequencies that he claims are coming from “inside.” Ezra’s cat, G-spot, has disappeared and he seems concerned with the truth of what is happening, what he calls the “people under the stairs” or “the aliens” who came in on the rock.  

As Lavinia and Benny realize that things have gone seriously wrong, they attempt to call their parents but the distortion over the phone lines prevents them from being able to clearly communicate. They make plans to flee, but ultimately cannot do so as cars aren’t working and their horse ran away. 

On the way home from the hospital (where Theresa has had her fingers re-attached) Nathan and Theresa are unable to contact their kids with their cell phones and nearly run over what looks like a de-skinned but still living cat creature (Ezra’s cat). When they finally return home, they find Jack, all alone in the dark, staring at the well, and they both get really pissed at the older kids for leaving him unsupervised. The olders try to explain that things are getting weird, but of course the parents won’t listen. 

Over the course of the next day, Nathan’s behavior gets more and more strange as he is consuming water from the tap and in the ice he adds to his whiskey. Large alien plants show up in the garden as do alien praying mantises. The alpaca herd merges into one giant blob of skinless alien goo inside the barn. The pink lights that were started by the meteorite shoot lightning bolts (with radiation) around the property. As night approaches Theresa finds Jack outside in the dark and holds him close to her and the two are zapped by the lightning / radiation pink energy. The two are melded together into a nasty sort of “Jeresa” hybrid creature that looks like something from John Carpenter’s The Thing. 

Unable to drive into town for help, because the battery on the car has been drained overnight, Nathan and Benny move the Jeresa creature up into the dark attic (to protect it from sunlight which seems to be harming it). The kids are pretty freaked out understandably and by this point Lavinia has already cut a whole bunch of ancient runes and symbols into her flesh as part of a protection spell. 

Nathan takes a shotgun out to the barn and kills the Alpaca ooze creature and then comes back to “handle” Jeresa in a similar manner against Lavinia’s pleas. But then, after kissing her slimy lips, Nathan decides not to kill Jeresa after all and then forces Lavinia to “feed her mother” by locking her in the attack with it. Jeresa is now a multi-legged spider alien creature with Lavinia’s mom’s distorted head and her younger brother’s face staring up from the creature’s back. It’s pretty gross. 

Ward comes to the farm with a policeman and realizes that Nathan has lost his mind. They attempt to free Lavinia from the attack as she is being attacked by Jeresa but it’s Nathan who ultimately shoots his former wife / son dead with his shotgun.

In the panic and the continued transformation of the farm into a cosmic horror realm, Nathan gets shot in the back by the policeman.

Benny stupidly jumps into the well to save Max their dog and gets wiped out by the pink light. Ward and the cop try to save Ezra who is already a corpse in his cabin. The policeman gets killed by a living tree. Lavinia has been possessed by the pink color and she shows the hidden world to Ward–a living breathing tentacled alien hellscape of pink and writhing objects–before she is annihilated by a nuclear explosion through her body.

Ward somehow survives the explosion and rises from the ashes of its destruction. Many years in the future we see Ward smoking a cigarette on a dam overlooking the reservoir that was built over the alien / evil world that killed the Gardner family. He hopes that the water will cover over the evil that lies beneath it and he leaves the frame as a strange pink mantis flies off screen in his wake.

Nicolas Cage at His Gonzo Best

There’s a lot to like in this role for Cage. The weird vibe of Lovecraft works well with the weird vibe of our nouveau shaman actor. From the doting and nerdy dad who tries to distract his teenage daughter from a potential suitor, to the goofball who knows the best ways to milk an Alpaca, to the psychopathic tantrum thrower who eats and spits out piece of multiple alien enlarged tomatoes before hurling them repeatedly into a trash can–we get it all.

Nathan also takes on this strange accent when he is in the thralls of the alien induced psychosis where he is imitating his father’s belittling voice. The Voice sounds a lot like someone imitating Donald Trump. I’m not saying Nicolas was going for Trump here, but that voice is immediately what comes to mind. The more agitated he gets with Lavinia or Benny, the more Trump-like he sounds. By the end of the film, he is talking to imaginary people in his living room and slurping down the whiskey like he reprised the role of Ben Sanderson in Leaving Las Vegas.  

The shower scene was hilarious, and the nasty rash Nathan gets from it allows him to get compulsively scratchy. I also enjoyed how angry Nathan gets when he is depicted as a UFO crazy by the local news. 

I’m starting to also notice a trend, too, where Nicky dies at the end of many a film nowadays. He’s getting shot and dying a lot more often than in the past. Not sure if that’s just a foregone conclusion or a choice in the roles he is taking, but I’m going to have to do some math pretty soon and see how many films he survives and how many he succumbs to his own (alleged) mortality. I didn’t really think anyone would survive this particular extraterrestrial event so I guess it made sense for the plot here.

Chong Wasn’t Wrong 

Tommy Chong has a nice little cameo as the ex-hippie squatter, Ezra, living on the Gardiner estate. A former electrician Ezra has wired up his little cottage on the property and it is powered completely by solar and is off the grid. When Ward visits him, he offers up his hippie wisdom and fresh coffee (with a little bit of some unpleasant frothiness on top). He is the owner of a pussycat named “G-spot” and seems a bit more attuned to the mystical / cosmic world than the other characters.

He recognizes the presence of alien life before anyone else and tries to capture audio evidence on reel to reel tape. Ezra tries to relay the warning to Ward about what they are really dealing with, but Ward, the man of science, doesn’t really buy into it. Even so, Chong’s not wrong. Unfortunately, Ezra gets zombified by the end of the film and looks like a character from The Walking Dead. But I guess that’s better than getting deskinned like G-spot was or getting melded with other creatures like Jeresa and the Alpaca Blob monster. 

First for Nicolas Cage as Nathan

• Cooking cassoulet
• Choosing fine wine from his wine cellar
• Having sex during a cosmic event
• Milking an alpaca
• Gets a big glob of alien goop on his hand in the shower
• Trying to do a handstand (deleted scene)
• Having a pretty nasty alien rash all over his arms

Recurrences

• Total spaz out scene in a car (Multiple)
• Starring in a cosmic horror film (Knowing, Mandy)
• Singing operatically (Moonstruck)
• Going kinda nutso on the kids (Mom & Dad)
• Blood splattered all over his face (Mandy)
• Killed by a gunshot wound at the end of a film (Multiple)

Quotables

“They are the food of the future, remember. The Mayans knew what was up.”  [Speaking of Alpaca]

“This is not mystery meat, dear.” 

“Everybody loves ducks.” 

“Like somebody lit a dog on fire.” 

“It wasn’t like any color I’d ever seen before.” 

“You know I’ve always been a leg man.’ 

“A dream you dream together is reality.” 

“You will always be my golden lady.” 

“And of course you have to be very gentle with the boobs. But once you get them warmed up…”

“Horrible, hideous. Oh my God, couldn’t someone have given me a comb. Jesus!” 

“What part of meteorite do you not understand?”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore.” 

“They’re not my family.”

“Don’t forget the crayons.” [Looking at kid’s photos] “Well these suck.”  [From deleted scene]

“He’s a…special.” 

Conclusion

Color Out of Space was made by the same producers as Mandy and there are some stylistic similarities here. I think Color Out of Space is perhaps more approachable to a general audience as it has a bit more humor and a family dynamic. BUT It really is a weird sci-fi film even though it doesn’t have the same dark vengeance overtones of Mandy. If not for the super disturbing Jeresa mutation scense, this film could have almost fallen into the Stranger Things bucket, but that little plot twist kind of turned it from quirky sci-fi to true cosmic horror. I had a hard time re-watching that scene in much the same way I had a hard time watching the grotesque nature of The Island of Dr. Moreau, the project Richard Stanley (the director of COoS) walked away from. 

All in all, I believe Color Out of Space stays pretty true to the story, themes, and tone of H.P. Lovecraft’s work. The film leaves some of Lovecraft’s despair with you as it concludes, the fragility of the finite in the face of the infinite. It takes someone like Cage coming apart at the seams to fully realize this kind of hollow destruction and alienation. 

Check it out if you need a good fairly recent B-movie to watch this weekend.