Review: "The Color Out of Space"

STANLEY, Richard (Dir.), “The Color Out of Space”, Ace Pictures/Spectrevision/HotPinkHorror LLC., 2019.

A few months ago, this was scheduled to be shown at our local arthouse cinema, Mount Vic. Flicks, which used to be our only alternative to blockbuster fare up here (whether they’ll be re-opening in future is still an open question). I was eagerly counting down the days, getting ready to see this film in style - in a proper cinema with a blanket and a Choc-Top (and maybe a bag of Jaffas to roll down the aisle) - when suddenly it’s COVID-19 and all of the cinemas shut down. I resigned myself to other issues and looked for other alternatives to present here. Along the way, I checked in regularly with JB HiFi and asked them to let me know when the film came to DVD. They did; I bought it online; and here it is, courtesy of an overworked courier network. My coronavirus shutdown experience is complete.

In between the film’s cancellation and the disc’s arrival, the Fortean Times published a review of the movie and an article by the director discussing the influence of HPL on modern horror fare (issue FT390, March 2020). Richard Stanley’s wide-ranging and obscure musings on the nature of the Mythos had some interesting things to say but very little of pertinence to the movie, leaving me to wish he’d stayed on topic a bit more, and David Sutton’s review of the film sat rather uncomfortably alongside it. I was wondering how this whole thing would turn out. I became uneasy…

In the final analysis, and sad to say, this effort is a straight-out “meh”. It has some clever aspects and some interesting points to make but I came away feeling a little less than gratified. There’s not really much here that we haven’t seen before, either in cinematic Mythos fare, or in straight horror film. Let’s take a look…

The story begins with one the best lines that HPL ever wrote – “West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut” – setting the scene immediately. The ensuing paragraphs of the written version detail the cancerous nature of the wilderness with its dark shadows and mystery; Stanley, to his credit, throws most of this at us right from the start, in the form of a narration which cherry-picks all the best lines and phrases from Lovecraft’s introduction. And I don’t blame him: the source material here is pure gold, as far as the Mythos goes. Along with it are some nice tracking shots of wild spaces and gloomy undergrowth: there is lots of pretty camerawork in this piece and it certainly helps to sell the narrative.

Stanley has taken the decision to bring the tale right into the present. In the short story, the details emerge from the muddled rememberings of an old resident – Ammi Pierce - who tells the visiting hydrographic engineer of the events which took place on the Gardner farm years before during the “strange days”. Here, in order to give the narrative a sense of immediacy, this secondhand aspect of the story is removed, and we get to see the events as they happen. This is necessary for any attempt at filming such material – cinema is a medium for showing, not telling, and this alteration would have been done regardless of who was doing the scripting. From here though, other choices begin to reveal themselves and not all of them are the best of decisions.

To get things out of the way right from the start, the Colour (I’m going to spell this the British way from now on: Lovecraft did, and it just looks wrong to me otherwise) is supposed to be off the spectrum, something indescribable. Here, it’s hot pink with constant shifts into the purple phase of the colour wheel. This isn’t a bad choice – it had to be something and there are worse colour palettes out there to choose from. Purple and its myriad other shades, denote indecision and uncertainty, so here it works as a symbol for something unexplained, or inexplicable. If the story had been set sometime approximating the original material it would have worked even better than it does in this contemporary update, but it’s fine. I think a lot of the nay-sayers out there need to take a deep breath…

(Personally, I think the whole film should have been shot in monochrome - black-and-white - with the colour being the only colour-element in the film. That would have demonstrated its alien-ness even better, to my mind!)

As to updating the narrative to a modern era, there’s a level of clunkiness that steps in. Right at the beginning we’re treated to a scene where our modern hydrographer encounters the eldest Gardner child enacting a Wiccan ritual on a lakeside. It’s a “meet-cute” between the characters who become the young lovers in our tale (although, to be fair, they are more correctly doomed young lovers) and it gives us an awareness of the Arkham region’s continuing obsession with witchcraft along with the notion of an impending reservoir development all of which are hallmarks of the Lovecraft tale. As introductions go it’s not awful, but the witchcraft doesn’t really go anywhere later on and seems a bit extraneous. The character is supposed to be opinionated and forthright – the family rebel – but with everything that she does for the rest of the movie, this evidence of her “alternative” inclinations and her edginess seems a little forced rather than anything else.

The rest of the Gardners are revealed to us in the following scenes and they are a bog-standard group of horror-film fodder characters – an upbeat Dad; a moderating and long-suffering Mother; a stoner Middle Child (although he could be the oldest sibling – it’s not clear. Still: stoner); and the over-imaginative Youngest Child. This is pretty much by-the-numbers in terms of cinematic horror fare and, while it tracks accurately with the short story personae (apart from the gender-swap in the case of the Eldest Child), it’s not anything new in terms of horror films. It’s fairly obvious who is there to facilitate what, and it’s fairly clear, right from the get-go with this arrangement, who lives and who dies.

(Of course, I should issue a Spoiler Alert at this point, although I assume that, if you’re here reading this, you’ve read Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space” at least once before. If you need a refresher – or if you want to jump in for the first time – take a few moments to go and read it. I’ll still be here when you get back.)

This is the problem with filming a classic story like this. The piece worked back in the day because it was fresh and different; since then a bunch of genre tropes have accreted on such material, with roots far back in the classic stories, but which now look tired and overdone. Nowadays we need someone like Jordan Peele to look at the old fare and go “that’s trite; let’s try something new”. Here, sadly, such thinking has not altogether been brought to bear. This list of characters might well be an homage to the source material, but they are Hollywood stereotypes, geared to our expectations, and so our interest and excitement are cut off at the knees from the outset.

Nevertheless, some attempt is made to change things up a little: the eldest child is gender-swapped and given witchcraft as a hobby, and the Mother is recovering from an aggressive bout of cancer treatment. Still, this is about the limit of their innovation, to the point where Middle Child is practically a cipher, with nothing to do for the bulk of his screen time, until the point where he gets killed off almost out of hand to simply tie off a loose end. It’s almost weird the way that even Nicolas Cage can’t drag anything fresh from his role as the father – you’d think that the moment Cage touched the script the Weirdness would overflow, but no. It’s a solid performance but it’s still paint-by-numbers.

The rest of the story is just body-horror. If you’ve seen John Carpenter’s “The Thing” then you’ve pretty much seen this, just dialled down a notch or two. The effects are fine – ‘always happy to see practical effects in place of an overuse of CGI – but even here it’s a bit patchy. While the ‘mother-merging-with-her-child’ effects are quite well done and appropriately disturbing, other scenes like the one with the llamas, not so much. And the choice to use effects, or not, is sporadic – we get shown a white horse at the start which, while all the other creatures are getting twisted and bent out of shape around it, only has a light purple iridescence in its eyes to indicate that it too has been affected. Frankly, they should have just dropped the horse (although, again, horses are in the source material; maybe Stanley should have tried not to be so didactic).

I think what I was expecting was something that would remain faithful to the concept of the original story, but also take it out to new pastures and have a little of the director involved. There are interesting innovations – the Colour affecting radio transmissions and other electronics; the crazy stoner dude (Cheech Marin) in the whacked-out cabin – but it’s all a little hesitant, as if the director was afraid to change the recipe of this sacred cheeseburger. Richard Stanley’s undeserved career narrative has been dragged out into the light ever since this film got green-lit; maybe he’s just a little gun-shy at this point (but frankly, Marlon Brando was just dining out on his own legend towards the end and certainly Val Kilmer should have been kicked into line; “The Island of Doctor Moreau” bombed, certainly, but the Hollywood studios should have stood by their director and pointed their fingers at the prima donnas who were actually to blame).

Millennia ago, there was a portmanteau film called “Creepshow” which debuted in 1982. One of the stories which comprised that film was “The Lonely Death of Jordy Verrill” which was a knock-off version of “The Colour Out of Space” except that the meteorite which crashes on the remote farm turns all of the animal life around it into plants. There’s only one character in the piece – played by, of all people, Stephen King – but it’s the stand-out chapter of the whole film. That’s because it’s got Lovecraft’s good bones as a narrative and, even bowdlerized like it was here, it can take the punishment. I think that’s where Richard Stanley falls short: this story can take it; you’ve just got to push it hard enough.

In the end, this is a good tale being held back by hesitancy and too much hero worship. The director didn’t do enough to make it his own and push the envelope. In short, it’s too much just a re-telling of HPL’s version. In itself that’s not a bad thing – gods know that there are way too many awful versions of Lovecraft’s material out there already – but even a good re-telling can’t outweigh an innovative and imaginative new piece. It’s like the difference between the awful 2011 re-make of “The Thing” versus something like 1998’s “Pi”: there’s no contest.

In the final analysis, this is expert filmmaking that’s true to its source material and is entirely entertaining. You will enjoy the 110 minutes spent with it and you won’t feel that you’ve wasted either your time or your money. Will it come back to haunt you though? Not at all.

Three-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors.