¡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…”
“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.)
