Starring Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, Elliott Knight

Directed by Richard Stanley

RLJE Films, out now

 

A secluded farm is struck by a strange meteorite which has apocalyptic consequences for the family living there.

Richard (Hardware) Stanley’s adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s 1927 story The Colour out of Space is as wonderfully bonkers as you’d want it to be, a psychedelic, demented dream of weird creatures and nature gone wrong.

This is by no means the first adaptation of the horror writer’s story – it has been preceded by Die, Monster Die! (1965), The Curse (1987) and Colour from the Dark (2008) – but this Nicolas Cage-starring vehicle feels most authentic to the source material and once you get past the slower first half hour you’ll have a blast.

Cage is Nathan Gardner (changed from Lovecraft’s Nahum) who with his wife Theresa (Joely Richardson) and three children have moved out of the city into his father’s old farm. Two of the kids are respectively Wiccan and a dopehead, but they all seem to be getting along OK… until the meteorite falls.

Lovecraft’s skill is in describing the colour of the alien rock as… indescribable – beyond the ability of a human to adequately comprehend it. For us, it’s a pinky purple, and soon it’s attracting lightning, creating a literal stink, contaminating the water supply and causing strange things to happen.

With Nicolas Cage’s performances it’s often hard to tell at what point he has become unhinged, and in fairness he starts this movie on a fairly even keel (even if he likes drinking warm, freshly extracted alpaca milk!) The family are visited by hydrologist Ward (Elliott Knight) who is scoping out a possible new reservoir while out back, and there’s a sitting tenant/squatter, Ezra (Tommy Chong), who seems attuned to the land. And then the weird stuff happens.

Joely Richardson chops her fingertips off, the cat goes all Pet Sematary, a purple mantis comes out of the well, crops grow extra big and early but taste awful, mother and son start fusing into one, and Cage goes the Full Cage. There’s also something ancient and glowing down the well…

Verdict: It’s great to have Richard Stanley back behind the camera again with a horror movie, and I really hope that his ongoing planned trilogy of Lovecraft movies starring Elliott Knight comes to pass. Harking back to Stuart Gordon’s and Brian Yuzna’s best gloopy work, this is a demented, gory joy. All’s well that ends in a well. 9/10

Nick Joy