Color out of Space opens by showing a girl named Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) performing a Wicca ritual, a belief in modern paganism. Looks strange, but a few minutes later the oddity is understandable, after we know that Lavinia is the daughter of Nathan Gardner, played by Nicolas Cage. The word “strange” and Nicolas Cage are like sugar and ants. Plus, this film is an adaptation of a short story by H. P. Lovecraft (The Color out of Space), where normalcy is rare.
After his wife, Theresa (Joely Richardson), undergoes a mastectomy, Nathan takes his family to move to his father’s farm in the fictional suburb of Arkham. There Nathan lived as a tomato farmer and milked alpaca (because Nicolas Cage was free to do anything). Besides Lavinia, Nathan and Theresa have two sons: Benny (Brendan Meyer) who likes to smoke weed with Ezra (Tommy Chong), a hippie who lives in the middle of the forest; and the youngest Jack (Julian Hilliard). Best Movie Site
The five of them plus Ward (Elliot Knight), a hydrologist who immediately attracted Lavinia’s attention, did not realize that peace in the rural area would not last long. One night, a brilliant purple light illuminated the Gardner Family’s home, along with the fall of a meteorite. That was the beginning of events beyond reason, which would make Nicolas Cage carry out his routine: screaming while hitting the car and throwing tomatoes into the bin like a basketball player showing off a slam dunk. A special entertainment for those who are familiar with their acting style.
Reaching the middle – from the duration of 111 minutes which is actually too long for the adaptation of Lovecraft’s long-winded short story – Color out of Space is only anomalous by anomalous exposure, which simply throws a question mark without involving the audience in the investigation of the mystery. That does not mean there are no clues stocked, only, the process of solving the mystery is not used as a pillar of the story. Movie Review
Indeed it is in line with the peculiarities of Lovecraft’s work, where the characters are trapped in situations out of control that do not give them the opportunity to merely understand it. But the duration is too long to give the impression of monotony when the audience can only surrender carried away by the current, even though director Richard Stanley, who returned after his controversial dismissal from the project The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) —with Steve Annis (I Am Mother) as a cinematographer, was able to produce a hypnotic array of hypnotizing visuals that impressed “otherwordly”, as an adaptation of Lovecraft’s work was done. Radiant light and aura of purple, shining human eyes and mouth, Color out of Space is like a strange cosmic comic.
Then the charm (read: craziness) of the film began to increase when Stanley began to explore the realm of body horror, presenting a parade of intriguing disturbing practical effects that gave another meaning to the statement “family stick together”. You will be shocked, stunned, disgusted, and come out with other responses that reflect distrust about unreasonable events, the closer they are to the end, the more surreal they feel.
But what really happened? Although not directly investigating mysteries, manuscripts by Richard Stanley and Scarlett Amaris offer several subtitles. First about the incompetent and irresponsible leader, who is represented in this film by two figures, namely Mayor Tooma (Q’orianka Kilcher) who only cares about infrastructure development and electability rather than dealing with water contamination, and Nathan as the head of the family. Top Movie
Nathan forced authority, yelling at his children if he felt incompetent to carry out his orders, but when one of them was injured, all he did was sit quietly, drowning himself in alcohol while throwing himself into a rage of frustration. Over time, the words “everything will be fine” or “everything is under control” from Nathan increasingly sounded hollow.
Regarding water contamination, Color out of Space is also a veiled enviromentalist utterance about nature’s efforts to restore its condition to the way it was before it was polluted by humans, with the figure “color” as an extension of the hand. Lovecraft’s works indeed recognize figures called “Great Old Ones”, which are gods who once ruled the Earth. So who exactly is eating away at cancer? Are they or we (humans)?