¡QUÉ HORROR! 2020

Candidate #6

COLOR OUT OF SPACE

(September 2019)

“... and then there was this ‘Boom!’ like, like, like a sonic boom, and a big flash, like a pink light…
“Or actually, I don’t even know what color it was, it wasn’t like any color I’d ever seen before, and then everything just blew up, or fell from the sky…”

The Gardners are working through a trying family situation when things get really effed up after a meteorite crash lands on their isolated alpaca farm in Richard Stanley’s outstanding Color Out of Space.

Being a huge fan of Stanley’s lo-fi SF classic Hardware, I was understandably both anxious and hopeful when news broke of his intent to adapt H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space,” so I’m frankly relieved that the film came out spectacularly, and that I loved it as much as I do.

Stanley and co-writer Scarlett Amaris refract familial dynamics through the kaleidoscope of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, shining that unearthly-colored light into the cracks and crevices of the fault lines that run through any family (no matter how apparently well-adjusted), to uncover the wriggling mutations that breed in the darkness of neglect, misunderstanding, and generational trauma.

Produced by SpectreVision (Go, Frodo!), this is a hallucinatory, unsettling, and mind-blowing first taste of what Stanley hopes will, heh, evolve into a trilogy of Lovecraft adaptations.

So, yes, hopefully more where this came from!

“Drink? I’m having one.”

Parting Shot 1:

Not only do we have a cast that includes Joely Richardson, Tommy Chong, Nicolas Cage, and a menagerie of animal actors with awesome names like Rowan, Lucifer, Xibanga, Bruno, and Ulisses, we also get a significant appearance of the so-called “Simon Necronomicon,” which my brothers and I actually had a copy of (the Avon paperback, if memory serves me correctly) way back when…

Parting Shot 2:

There’s also more Lovecraft to be had this year, with HBO’s adaptation of Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country, scheduled for an August release.

Co-produced by J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele, Lovecraft Country more directly engages with the writer’s more problematic views on race.

Parting Shot 3:

Stanley’s adaptation makes a fine double feature with Alex Garland’s Annihilation…

Just saying…

(Color Out of Space OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[9 of 10]

ANNIHILATION

(February 2018)

"Isn't self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?”

Alex Garland’s Annihilation (based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer) is heady, horror-tinged science fiction, the kind we need far more than the N^th iteration of some tired SF franchise.

And while some may wonder at its inclusion here, I think it’s quite clear to those who frequent the Iguana that my definition of “horror” has always been very broad, allowing for diverse moods and tastes, from quiet elegance to raucous bombast.

Think of Annihilation as the horror of science, of nature gone horribly awry.

And not in the ‘70’s “animals go wild, nature vs man” schlock cinema sense (though there are flitting shades of that sensibility here), but rather in the sense of the horror of chaos, of the terrible, maddening possibility of having everything we take for granted twisted into unnatural and terrifying shapes.

Garland captures a grotesque beauty here, the awful majesty of seeing the mundane transfigured into the bizarre and the alien, his vision helped along tremendously by the soundscape laid down by Ben Salisbury and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow (the duo also scored Garland’s Ex Machina and Black Mirror’s “Men Against Fire”).

Plus, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Natalie Portman.

Need I say more?

(Annihilation OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

Candidate #5

ANNIHILATION

(February 2018)

"Isn't self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?”

Alex Garland’s Annihilation (based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer) is heady, horror-tinged science fiction, the kind we need far more than the N^th iteration of some tired SF franchise.

And while some may wonder at its inclusion here, I think it’s quite clear to those who frequent the Iguana that my definition of “horror” has always been very broad, allowing for diverse moods and tastes, from quiet elegance to raucous bombast.

Think of Annihilation as the horror of science, of nature gone horribly awry.

And not in the ‘70’s “animals go wild, nature vs man” schlock cinema sense (though there are flitting shades of that sensibility here), but rather in the sense of the horror of chaos, of the terrible, maddening possibility of having everything we take for granted twisted into unnatural and terrifying shapes.

Garland captures a grotesque beauty here, the awful majesty of seeing the mundane transfigured into the bizarre and the alien, his vision helped along tremendously by the soundscape laid down by Ben Salisbury and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow (the duo also scored Garland’s Ex Machina and Black Mirror’s “Men Against Fire”).

Plus, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Natalie Portman.

Need I say more?

(Annihilation OS courtesy of impawards.com.)