An H. P. Lovecraft short story gets some vivid, treatment thanks to producers like Elijah Wood, director Richard Stanley, and Nicolas Cage (sounding at times like he did in Peggy Sue Got Married) set in a rural enclave of the Bay State.
Color Out of Space might not be a cult favorite but it will likely attract those really into science-fiction and horror as unhurried as it is for a good stretch.
Cage has interacted with llamas and camels before in earlier roles but now he gets to do so with alpacas at an inherited farm as patriarch Nathan Gardner. His missus Theresa (Joely Richardson) does on-line bartering work but has been battling breast cancer.
So Stanley, a co-writer, sets up this domesticity with sweater-lad Nathan diving a Volvo that includes their kids. Teen daughter (a pretty sharp, Goth-like Madeleine Arthur) is into the Wiccan lifestyle and comes across a local scientist/hydrologist (Elliot Knight), who’ll provide voice-over in the deep forest.
The family’s yard will glow after a meteor crash and a mellow squatter/groundskeeper Ezra played by Tommy Chong will begin to sense a foreboding aura. It looks like an invasive entity has already made their presence known through the water supply. Young son Jack, done by Julian Hilliard will have some discourse with a “boy in the well.”
This Stanley enterprise enjoys conjuring the eccentricities of the antecedent and its maker with the otherworldly perhaps having a kinship with what went on a more filly realized and coherent one like Annihilation.
Still, what emanates around the machinations of a shady local mayor Q’orianka Kilcher in fuchsia and hot pink from cropping up lets the cast and crew do their best unbalanced delirium. Especially, in the case of Cage who knows a thing or two about sizing up the extent of a character already considered abutting the psychopathic.
The space occupied by Color invites a fairly riveting aural and visual experience and tension like when Theresa begins chopping up carrots. Its wrap-up isn’t as striking as what the leading man, his co-stars and crew with a few eye-popping f/s bring to what at times seems like Altered States crossed with Re-Animator.