¡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.)

ISOLATION
(Review)

Isolation’s premise is simple: Dan (John Lynch) is a farmer who’s agreed to have some of his cows undergo an experimental procedure, courtesy of Bovine Genetics Technology. Dan’s not entirely sure what’s been done to his cows, but he’s about to find out.
And when he does, what we get from writer/director Billy O’Brien is an oppressive and terribly unsettling exercise in biological horror the likes of which we’ve not seen since the horror heyday of the ‘80’s.

O’Brien delivers up a taut and tense little nasty that exploits the Irish farm setting for all its unsanitary and repulsive worth, and, armed with a disturbingly designed beastie (by Stephen Brown and Philippa Wright), unleashes a no-nonsense horror movie that truly gets under the skin.
Quite possibly one of the best decisions made in this production was to go the way of physical, on-set effects. No cold, sterile CGI here. The effects are warm, and gooey, and horribly organic: Isolation is everything Species should have been, but wasn’t.
O’Brien pushes just the right panic buttons—fear of infection, of the act of reproduction gone terribly wrong, of the dire consequences of genetic tampering—to make modern audiences squirm uncomfortably in their seats. It’s been awhile since a film of this sort has been so spot-on in its desired effect of scaring the beejeezus out of its viewer.

Helping to ground the film are some rather good performances by a cast which, aside from Lynch (who starred in Richard Stanley’s low budget cyberpunk opus, Hardware, and the Gwyneth Paltrow-starrer, Sliding Doors), also includes The Matrix sequels’ Essie Davis (who also starred as Mrs. Lovett in the BBC TV adaptation of Sweeney Todd, opposite Mr. Beaver/Beowulf himself, Ray Winstone), Sean Harris (who was in Brothers of the Head and was Ian Curtis in Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People), and Breakfast On Pluto’s Ruth Negga.
Their understated performances, amidst the fantastic and gruesome elements of the narrative, make the whole that much more believable.

Isolation is low budget horror that packs a potent punch, that gets you on a visceral level and leaves you disturbed, even after Jim Ford’s “I’m Going To Make You Love Me” has trailed off, and the end credits have completely rolled.
If horror’s your thing, you really should check it out. You’ll never look at a cow in the same way again…

(Isolation French OS courtesy of impawards.com; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)