After being fired from the much-maligned Island of Dr. Moreau, Richard Stanley gets another crack at adapting a beloved work of horror fiction with this Nicolas Cage-starring sci-fi/horror flick based on a tale by H.P. Lovecraft. The story was also the basis of the 1987 shitfest, The Curse. While Color Out of Space is leagues better than that dung heap, it still never quite kicks into overdrive.
Cage stars as a family man who lives on an alpaca farm with his wife and three kids. One night, a meteor crash lands in their yard, and pretty soon things start getting mighty peculiar down on the farm. Before long, the meteor shit gets into the water and it starts having strange effects on the family members. Cage admirably tries to keep the family together, even when the family starts… uh… coming together.
Stanley takes his time unfurling the premise. This would be okay if he was merely building suspense, but there are a few too many unnecessary characters and subplots that sort of prevent the film from really getting into gear. The stuff with the water-testing scientist (Elliot Knight) and the hippie freeloader (Tommy Chong) causes the first act to stall. As David Keith did with The Curse, Stanley overdoes it with all the close-ups of the glasses of water to hammer home the fact that the water is no bueno.
Once the colors (mainly pink and purple) start lighting up the farmhouse, Color Out of Space starts to settle into a decent rhythm. The briefly seen monster effects are reminiscent of both The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness, and there’s a gooey sequence that will probably remind you of The Fly 2 as well. I know Stanley was trying to show restraint here, but he really should’ve cranked up the weird monster shit to balance out the slow beginning.
The same goes for Cage. Whenever he’s the upstanding father and husband, he just acts like your average guy. Once the meteor shit hits the fan, he occasionally will step on the gas and hightail it to Cageland. However, there isn’t quite enough Caginess to salvage the picture. Then again, only a guy like Cage could take a line like, “It’s time to milk the alpacas!” and turn it into poetry.
Just when it looks like it’s ramping up, the film fizzles out just before it reaches the homestretch. The fact that it runs nearly two hours certainly didn’t do it any favors either. The colors are spiffy and all, but the movie itself ain’t very bright.
I thought the 1996 film was actually pretty fun.
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