Color Out of Space

Almost thirty years after directing “Dust Devil” (1992), Richard Stanley’s feature film comeback is a pleasant surprise in and of itself, but the event is rendered even more intriguing by his decision to adapt one of H.P. Lovecraft’s best stories – “The Colour Out of Space” – which up to that point had inspired only a series of lame – if not downright disastrous – film adaptations. Both director and co-screenwriter, our man Stanley opts for a contemporary setting and takes more than a few liberties with the plot, but he attempts to remain faithful to the spirit and substance of the literary source.

A successful throwback on the whole, “Color Out of Space” reveals a nostalgic affection for a style of representing horror that’s gradually disappeared from today’s movies. The numerous allusions to the Cthulhu cycle (from references to Miskatonic University to the names of towns and characters), and, more generally, to great works of similar-themed fantasy from the early 20th century (William Hope Hodgson, Clark Ashton Smith, etc.), are nothing but the corollary of a profound assimilation of the Lovecraft universe (the well-known “Lovecraft Circle”).

At the heart of the matter obviously lies the concept of “cosmic horror”, near and dear to the Rhode Island recluse, a notion that translates into an impossibility of comprehending (first and foremost) and of communicating (secondarily) the aberrant reality that – unbeknownst to us – is wont to surround us, at the price of our sanity (“What touched this place cannot be quantified or understood by human science. It was just… a color out of space, a messenger from realms whose existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the gulfs that it throws open before our frenzied eyes“).

Far from illuminating the path, knowledge and technology constantly take on sinister echoes, what with the classic rebellion of the machine (with their anomalous behavior, cell phones and TV sets quickly become instruments of fear) and because investigating the unknown can’t help but lead us to an awful truth with nightmarish features (in which case it’s best to flee “into the peace and safety of a new dark age…”).

Decent performances from the cast, including Nicolas Cage, whose unhinged, over-the-top performance (especially in the third act) is for once justified by the extraordinary events that bedevil the Gardner family.

Dark and menacing, Colin Stetson’s soundtrack hits the mark.