I wasn’t entirely prepared the first time I watched “Color
Out of Space.” Seeing it back in September during my trip to cover the Toronto
International Film Festival, the gonzo science fiction-horror flick wasn’t
entirely what I expected.
The film was screening as part of TIFF’s Midnight Madness
series, which presents a wild slate of action, horror, shock, and fantasy
cinema. The films presented under that banner are a diverse bunch, trending
toward the pulpy. But part of the fun is that you never know what you’re going
to get. And screenings often get rowdy.
Crucially, I didn’t actually see “Color Out of Space” during
its public midnight screening, but a day later during a mid-afternoon showing
specifically for press and industry, where the audience tends to be a bit more
subdued and slightly more jaded. In that context, the film’s offbeat, goofy
tone didn’t quite hit right.
But what is my life if not to offer a moviegoing
template for others to learn from my mistakes? My second viewing was alone at
home watching a screener on my laptop. Still not ideal, but this time I had a
better idea of what I was getting into. And that made all the difference.
“Color Out of Space” marks the eagerly-anticipated
reemergence of filmmaker Richard Stanely, who returns
to the director’s chair for the first time since being fired off his 1996
remake of “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” starring Val Kilmer and the late Marlon
Brando. The full story of that ill-fated film’s troubled production was
chronicled in the entertaining doc “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard
Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau,” but long story short: Stanley was replaced by
John Frankenheimer, though he still received credit
for co-writing the screenplay.
One of the benefits of seeing a film during its festival run
is that by catching it early, prior to any theatrical release and before any
real buzz or hype can take hold. The downside of that is by going in cold, you
don’t have a chance to get yourself into the right headspace for whatever
you’re about to witness.
An adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, “Color Out of
Space” centers on the Gardner family, who’ve recently relocated from the city
to a remote farmhouse in rural Massachusetts.
Family patriarch Nathan (Nicholas Cage) longs for the quiet
life raising alpacas with his slightly distracted wife Theresa (Joely Richardson), who’s still on the mend from a recent
illness, along with their stoner eldest son Benny (Brendan Meyer), black
magic-obsessed teenage daughter Lavinia (Madeleine
Arthur), and precocious young son Jack (Julian Hilliard).
When a mysterious meteorite crash-lands on their land, it
sinks into the ground and begins to emit an otherworldly fuchsia-colored
energy. That energy gradually appears to trigger some strange mutations in
nearby flora and fauna, and eventually leads to increasingly erratic behavior
in the family themselves (cue a whole lot of screaming about alpacas: whether
they’ve been fed, have they been checked on, are they locked in for the night,
and oh god what happened to the alpacas?!). Or maybe it’s all in their heads.
When it comes to midnight movies, the traditional rubrics of
what is “good” and what’s “bad” get set aside in favor of more mercenary
benchmarks like “am I entertained?” And I was certainly never bored. Frequently
skeptical, occasionally confused, sometimes delighted, but definitely never
bored. To say nothing about the joys of watching Cage descending into full-on freak-out
mode (seriously, so much yelling about alpacas).
With its mix of straight-up horror, gooey makeup effects, and
performances that dance along the edges of camp, “Color Out of Space” is the
platonic ideal of a midnight movie. For maximum enjoyment, it’s made to be
enjoyed beer in hand, with some raucous (preferably slightly intoxicated)
like-minded weirdos.
“Color Out of Space” is heaven for cult film enthusiasts. And
seeing it in the mostly full Scotiabank IMAX Theater alongside semi-interested
industry folk in stone-faced silence just didn’t have the same effect. The film
is messy, goofy, over-the-top, and oh so squishy; a wild time at the movies. As
long as you’re prepared.
Adam
Lubitow is a freelance writer for CITY. Feedback on
this article can be directed to becca@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2020.
