"Color Out of Space"

Watch as swirling dreamscapes of color bath the edge of a forest in their pale unearthly glow. A force has arrived - something unspeakable, something horrific, something from the darkest depths of space that perhaps should have stayed there. My friends, sometimes the Mountains of Madness are just outside your front door. And Tommy Chong is there with you, high as a kite, and he's making more sense than you are. After a quarter of a decade, director Richard Stanley has returned to bring H.P. Lovecraft's seminal science fiction/horror story "The Color Out of Space" to life, in all its mindbending glory.



After Nathan Gardner (Nicolas Cage) takes his family to a farm near the remote town of Arkham after his wife Theresa's (Joely Richardson) masectomy, a meteorite strikes. This celestial object gives rise to a change in their behavior. A dramatic one, which is saying a lot, as the Cage character starts out obsessed with raising alpacas - yes, alpacas. (Seriously, if one were to create a drinking game and take a drink everytime a character mentions the word "alpacas" with increasingly-frantic intonation, one would be soused in the first 20 minutes.)




Cinematographer Steve Annis' lens captures vivid  images of flora and fauna as they blossom in unnatural ways. Colin Stetson's score creates an omnious and unsettling drone. And special mention should go to Madeleine Arthur as Lavinia Gardner the daughter who will practice Wiccan rituals so desperate is her desire to heal her mother. Arthur seems born to play a character with one foot in the mystical. Lavinia's rapport with her brother Benny (Brendan Meyer) has a frank, "E.T." feel, and young son Jack (Justin Hilliard) feels like a kid in the Elliot mold. And Elliot Knight as Ward Phillips fully embodies the quintessential Lovecraftian narrator who is destined to observe. And what sights Richard Stanley has to show him!

If you are a fan of Stanley's prior work ("Hardware", "Dust Devil") or John Carpenter's oeuvre, "Color Out of Space" will rock your world and somewhere beyond.