Color Out of Space

Color Out of Space is a 2019/2020 American science fiction Lovecraftian horror film directed and co-written by Richard Stanley, based on the short story "The Colour Out of Space" by H. P. Lovecraft. It stars Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, Elliot Knight, Madeleine Arthur, Q'orianka Kilcher and Tommy Chong. This is Stanley's only feature film since his firing from The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). According to Stanley, it is the first film in a trilogy of Lovecraft adaptations, which he hopes to continue with an adaptation of "The Dunwich Horror".

Plot
After a meteorite lands in the front yard of their farm, Nathan Gardner and his family find themselves battling a mutant extraterrestrial organism that infects their minds and bodies, transforming their quiet rural life into a technicolor nightmare.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) It was nice to see Richard Stanley's welcoming return for feature film as director, since he was fired from poorly received movie, The Island of Dr. Moreau.
 * 2) Colin Stetson’s soundtrack progresses from natural sounding strings to oppressive, unnatural synth in a truly incredible way.
 * 3) Tommy Chong of all people manages to sound genuinely disturbing on the recording his character Ezra left behind. Nicolas Cage, as always, is one of the bravest and greatest performers to ever step in front of a camera.
 * 4) When the Gardners are featured on the news, Nathan complains that the segment makes him seem like a delusional hick due to his monotonous voice and unkempt hair. When asked if he'd been drinking before he saw the meteor, Nathan admits to having a bourbon, the chyron attached to the segment refers to him as a "bourbon connoisseur", making him look even worse. That's on top of "UFO Witness" and "Amateur Farmer."
 * 5) The first sign of the Color affecting the family is when Theresa is absent-mindedly preparing dinner. She doesn't notice that the egg she just cracked has blood in it and as she's chopping up a carrot, she slices her fingers clean off without realising it.
 * 6) The climax is entertaining. Ward finds an entranced Lavinia standing in front of the well. He puts a hand on her shoulder and she turns to him as her eyes and the Wiccan rune she carved on her forehead start glowing. By touching her, Ward experiences a disturbing vision of the realm from which the Color originates: a rocky wasteland infested with writhing tentacled creatures and towering horn-like stone structures, all to Colin Stetson's eerie soundtrack. Ward can only scream in terror and fall back, while Lavinia holds her hands out in a messiah-like fashion as the Color bursts out of the well in a swirling purple funnel as it leaves Earth, all the while bending time and space around it, while Lavinia disintegrates from its corruption of her.
 * 7) *Ward struggles to make his way into the house as the horrid pink glow warps his body in weird blurry shapes, and as he gets in the house, distorted voices of the Gardners echo through the house, and what appears to be a possessed Nathan, the source of these voices, gets up and attacks him. Ward can hardly manage to get into the wine cellar as the Color's departure fully destroys the property. The final shot shows Nathan's charred corpse, still with his wedding ring on as Ward climbs out of the cellar, finding the farmstead gone, nothing but white ash flowing in the wind and covering the ground. Ward's haunted look and recollection upon examining the newly-built reservoir tops off how hellish his ordeal was and how thoroughly traumatizing the Gardners' deaths were for him.
 * 8) Much like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, this movie was nearly saved the career of Nicolas Cage, after many poorly made direct-to-video movies.

The Only Bad Quality

 * 1) Nathan kissing Theresa after she's been mutated may get disgusted.

Reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Color Out of Space holds an approval rating of 86% based on 210 reviews, and an average rating of 6.80/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "A welcome return for director Richard Stanley, Color Out of Space mixes tart B-movie pulp with visually alluring Lovecraftian horror and a dash of gonzo Nicolas Cage.". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."