Color Out of Space (2020)
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Color Out of Space Movie Review
Color Out of Space is a 2020 science fiction horror film directed by Richard Stanley and starring Nicolas Cage. It’s a visually arresting, very strong genre flick.
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“What touched this place cannot be quantified
or understood by human science.
It was just a color out of space“
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After a meteorite lands in the front yard of their farm, Nathan Gardner and his family find themselves battling a mutant extraterrestrial organism that infects their minds and bodies, transforming their quiet rural life into a Technicolor nightmare. The movie is based on an eponymous short story by the famous genre author H. P. Lovecraft, and it has all of the hallmarks of his best writing.
The aliens in this movie are fascinating. As a biology enthusiast myself, I adored the alien organisms here. They are all resembling Earth creatures, but are either more beautiful or uglier, and definitely all are more purple. In fact, never have I seen a more purple movie in my entire life, which is something that this movie can be proud of, if that counts for anything.
The grasshopper/mantis kind of insect was very intriguing, but so were those pretty pinkish flowers. The ugly purple cat was incredibly disturbing and that sequence was very unnerving in its unexpectedness. The movie took a bit of inspiration from ‘The Thing’ in the barn scene, which clearly resembled the dogs’ being infected scene from that film. The alpacas are so cute that it was horrible seeing their brutal demise.
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The first half of this movie was refreshingly slower in pace and mysterious in its approach, thus it’s unlike most sci-fi horrors these days, and that is the thing that I respected the most about it. It takes its time to build genuine suspense, and the results are more than stellar because of it. Still though, the second half was a bit disappointing. I did absolutely love that glimpse into the aliens’ planet, that was super cool, but other than that, it was somewhat disappointing and overly bloody of a conclusion. The sci-fi elements are all great, but I wanted more of them as the film clearly chose horror as its main genre of interest.
Nicolas Cage is hit-or-miss in this film. He has become a joke in the last decade, especially in the 2000s for becoming too over-the-top and unintentionally hilarious in his performances. That level of theatricality was unfortunately present in a couple of scenes here, especially in his outburst as his daughter, which was way too campy for me. But, other than those smaller bits, he was quite restrained for the most part, and he actually delivered a decent performance.
The mother is a very interesting character and also well performed by the actress, but the movie’s treatment of her was ridiculously brutal as the bad things that happened to her piled up significantly until the end of the movie. That was surprising to me and definitely something that they did not need to do. I liked their kids with the pagan daughter being particularly memorable and the best written one of the three.
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Color Out of Space is visually stupendous. I loved the use of the colors purple and pink. The film definitely felt like a Technicolor feature, but it was contrasted superbly by the inherent darkness in its plot. The emotional investment was also strong. Some of the dialogue, though, was questionable, and the film’s ecological subplot about water control was quite diluted.
Although I wished for more of those intriguing SF elements as the movie clearly chose horror as its main genre of interest, Color Out of Space is still a highly memorable, very well done genre film that deftly mixes Lovecraft with ‘The Thing’. Nic Cage was expectedly over-the-top in a couple of scenes, but usually thankfully quite restrained. The entire family was well developed, the first half is pleasantly slower in pace and mysterious in approach whereas the Technicolor-like visuals are simply mesmerizing. On a side note, this has to be the most purple movie ever made.
