Color Out of Space: Nic Cage, a chaotic, senseless script plus a meteor equals, um...

By Karen Gordon

Rating: C

Even a sci-fi-horror film that takes its characters into the irrational should have at least one toe in reality, an organizing principle or a base of logic.  And the lack of that is just one of the problems with Color Out of Space.

Another is the now-trademark scene-chewing of Nicolas Cage. 

The film is an adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story, made by cult writer/director Richard Stanley (Hardware, Dust Devil). It played the Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Midnight Madness series.

Joely Richardson and Nicolas Cage examine the meteorite which will ultimately make Nic go nuts..

Color Out of Space stars Cage, as Nathan Gardner, who with his wife Theresa (Joely Richardson), and their three kids, lives in an isolated farmhouse, where he raises alpacas. As one does.

They have two teens the Goth-y Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), who quietly practices witchcraft in her room, their stoner son Benny (Brendan Meyer) and their youngest son, a sweet pre-schooler named Jack (Julian Hilliard).  

Despite individual differences, they seem like a pretty solid, happy family. Theresa is recovering from cancer and that’s made her withdraw from her husband and wonder if she’s still attractive to him. But Nathan is anxious to reassure her of his love and attraction.  Lavinia does a spell to hasten her mother’s return to health. 

Then a meteor with a pulsing crimson hue smashes into the front of their property.  Nathan calls for help, and, for some reason Ward Phillips, a handsome hydrologist played by Elliot Knight, is dispatched. There are the beginnings of a flirtation with Lavinia.  As part of his investigation he’s referred to the only other resident of the property, an isolated hippy-shaman type named Ezra, played by Tommy Chong. 

But by that point whatever life form came on that meteor has already started to exert an odd effect.  First, it’s Jack, who sits staring at the well, insisting he’s talking to ‘the man at the bottom.” Then the vegetation in the area starts to grow crimson coloured flowers. Tomatoes and peach trees mature at super speed, and some family members start to behave in odd ways, observed with growing alarm by the two teens who may or may not be affected.  They seem the most level-headed characters at various points in the story. 

Cell phones show caller IDs from dad, but the reception is disturbed with odd sounding static. And then things get really weird as the crimson-coloured lights start to change more than just the vegetation.

The movie looks pretty good, given that it’s small budget effort, and it achieves a sense of tension. But beyond that, the result is frustrating. 

There are inconsistencies  and puzzling turns in the story (why would the city send a hydrologist to check the water after a meteor impact), and in the tone, which veers from naturalistic, to melodramatic. 

At some points, seems to veer to the slightly comic. But is that deliberate, or a consequence of having Nic Cage in the film. Cage ’s portrayal of the character from the get-go is so odd and frankly creepy that it’s like he’s in a different movie.  But then, perhaps that could be said of most of the characters.  As the movie goes on, the motivation for some of their behavior, even in the face of an alien influence, seems a bit too scattered and random. Even in a horror movie chaos needs some logic

Cage though, with his, well, Cage-ian quirks is a distraction. There is a point where the film turns into pure horror, but its undermined by his scene-chewing style. “Nic losing his sh--.” may be what fans have come to expect from him, but it’s become too much of an affectation and it’s too out of sync with what the rest of the cast is doing. 

In the end, one wonders what point Stanley is driving at. The last third of the movie takes the story in so many different directions that one gets the sense that there isn’t any.  It renders the entire movie an exercise a frustration.

Color Out of Space. Directed by Richard Stanley. Starring Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson and Tommy Chong. Opens Friday, January 24 in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, Kitchener and Ottawa.