Review: Colour Out of Space

Based upon the novel of iconic Cosmic Horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s Novel, Colour Out of Space is a fantasy/sci-fi adaptation directed by Richard Stanley. The author, the genre of cosmic horror combined with the director in and of itself is a giveaway of the world the movie portrays, which is in every sense far from the usual mainstream horror flicks. Compared to this film, the haunting brilliance of Annihilation (dir. Alex Garland) becomes a dream sequence.

If you magnify the amplitude of a familial life-threatening fear invoked by A Quiet Place (dir. John Krasinski) by a thousand, you get Colour Out of Space which although is contained to a small part of Arkansas but much more concentrated in intensity.

img courtesy: imdb

The film is audacious and unflinching in its grotesque graphic form, which spares no expense to make the audience squirm in its inflicted tension.

Everything is going fine and dandy for the Gardner family until a meteor of unexplainably vivid unearthly color drops in their front lawn. Like any rational fictional character, Nathan, the patriarch of the family ignores the malfunctions caused by the mutation of every sentient thing around the place. This hypnotizing energy wave is present in the static, the atmosphere and through water, it contaminates Nathan’s family and everything around them.

The visuals of the film are entrancing with the vibrant colour palette and cinematography of a cosmic Portugal snatching the breath away and then bringing it back to enliven the films’ malformed and monstrous bits. The screenplay tries to fit in absurd comedic bits every now and then, but the overwhelming tone of a lingering heterochromatic horror devours its effect by the time the dialogue ends. Nicholas Cage as Nathan is the riveting center of the film, effortlessly switching from the role of a domestic and sentimental father whose frustrations burst forth, birthing an impetuous madman. However, the film’s ending abruptly dials down the pronounced extremes to a sudden zero, which leaves a permanent deficient void.

img courtesy: imdb