Summary
When a meteor crash lands near their home in the New England woods, one family is given a glimpse of the universe outside their capacity to grasp without insanity inducing effect.
Context
Horror films like “Color Out of Space” are rare and many times hard to find. I don’t know if I would have even heard of it if not for the cross section of two of my passing interests (H.P. Lovecraft and Nicolas Cage) happening to get some Venn Diagram synergy bonus to my perception check. I’m not enough of a fan of either of them for this movie to blip on my radar but with both of them coinciding it flew just high enough to get my attention.
It would have still most likely have escaped my attention if not for the great work by Nic Hartman at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts and the social media team there for not only programming it but putting in the work to get it in front of the eyes of the Grand Rapids Cinema Community.
It was a blast seeing the film with so many fans of interesting films and even more so when the film in question happened to be so good.
A huge thanks to Nic and the team at the UICA. “Color Out of Space” will be playing there for the next couple of weeks so be sure to check out the showtimes and support this film.
The Film
It’s weird. It’s trippy. Strange creatures, body horror, and cosmic glimpsing despair all add to its disturbing, intense, and skin-crawlingly discomfort and terror. It has Nic Cage doing both serious and insane acting and Tommy Chong (“Up In Smoke”) playing a hippie dude who seems right at home, squatting on Nicolas Cage’s land in this film. The sound design churns and scrapes your nerves raw like chains dredging up a river for a dead body. It simply delivers everything I was hoping to find in this movie.
I feel like I could end my review right there and the target audience will recognize this film for what it is… a transcendent exploration of the terror of the unknown in an indifferently powerful universe. So let’s break it down now into what I think makes this film so special out of those above superlative compliments I just lay on so thick.
Starting with Nic Cage (“Army of One”), I’ll say that this is one of my favorite of his performances in recent years alongside the insane film “Mandy.” Cage has a long history of acting insane on and off screen but also being a very good actor. He may make wild choices but that is because he is trying to push the boundaries of his performance the same way an athlete might push how fast they can run or high they can jump. Sure they may not always get a personal record but if they don’t swing for the fences they never will. Cage swings hard every time and this film is no exception.
In fact, I would say that this film is a great showcase for Cage’s range.
As his normal world unravels around him, his wife, and three kids, he runs the gamut from awkward dad of teenagers, loving and dutiful husband, angry and impatient father, fearful protector, crazy murderer, desperate whimpering fool, and of course, the weird crazy acting that Cage has occasionally allowed us to glimpse in films like “Vampire’s Kiss.” If you like Nic Cage for his range, insane tendencies, and interesting film selections then this one won’t disappoint.
When it comes to the way that this film induces terror, it doesn’t rely on cheap tricks to make you startle although it doesn’t eschew the practice entirely. Instead it uses a variety of methods to create an atmosphere that feels completely uncertain and wild. Just when you think you have a handle on what kind of insanity this alien presence is unleashing upon our family, the film surprises you with another level of unexpected strangeness that has you literally grabbing the arms of your theater seat when the scene changes as you wonder, “Oh great! What’s going to happen NOW?!
I’ll admit this may frustrate some audiences. Many times when I read or listen to people discuss horror that speak at length about how horror should be grounded in rules that are clear so that the audience knows what to be afraid of. If you don’t know that a monster, for instance, can eviscerate you, then you won’t be as scared if you do. This movie throws that kind of thinking out the window and says, “ Well what if there is no monster and what happens to you is so foreign and unknown that evisceration seems too grounded and familiar a thing to actually be scary anymore. There are moments in this film where you fully believe that the characters would take a known quantity any day of the week over what is happening, maybe not happening, or perhaps has already happened to them.
If this seems like a scattered thought, that is somewhat intentional. It’s scattered because it is about the unknown and it would be sort of silly if I was really able to nail down something like how this film tackles the unknown. Being able to speak clearly on it would be a clear indication that the film didn’t really accomplish its goal.
My favorite ways, and the ones that will probably get the most attention online, are the blending of special and visual effects, creative lighting, and fascinating sound and score mixes. If I could compare it to another exploration of insanity and isolation “The Lighthouse” this film is in many ways the opposite of that one. In “The Lighthouse,” Eggers employs mostly traditional camera techniques and lighting language to communicate the story of a man’s unraveling sanity. He strips the film down till the tension is created mostly by the brilliant performances and stark setting. It is terrifying because it is so raw, real, and stomach dropping as realizing you are on an island with someone who is totally willing to kill you.
“Color Out of Space” on the other hand pumps the film full of color and sound that whirls in unnatural and unpredictable ways with just enough grounding to convince you it is real. The colors remind me of Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives” or Harmony Korrine’s “Spring Breakers” but the sense of insanity is more about how ungrounded it seems to be. It’s not the fear of being killed. It’s the fear of something worse than being killed happening to you. Something you can’t even begin to fathom or imagine.
The film unfortunately does have a couple weaknesses. The daughter, Lavinia, played by Madeleine Arthur (“Big Eyes”) is great in the latter half of the film but I really didn’t care for her in the early stages of the film. I just found her way less believable as the pseudo Wiccan googly eyed crush driven brat that she is trying to play in that part of the film than the terrified little girl just trying to make it out with her family.
There were also a few moments where the CGI didn’t cut it for me. Not in the spectral universe exploration sequences or even the environmental and light effects but in some of the rendering of body effects that were either not done practically or sweetened enough in post that they lost their realistic grounding.
Ultimately, these are nitpicks, though. None of these moments last long and there is so much going on and whirling in your head by the end of the movie that a few bad 3D models or a slightly wooden or under affected performance moment will hardly pull you out of the movie very far.
If you are one of those people who are looking for an alternative to the popular horror, slasher, Conjuring 5: The Annnabelle Con-Nun-drum fare of the American cinema these days, “Color Out of Space” will have you rubbing your eyes squinting as the house lights come up and thinking “I don’t think I’ve experienced anything quite like that before.”
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