Color Out of Space ★★★☆☆
Oh, Color Out of Space. A film that dares to answer the burning question: what happens when a meteorite crash-lands on your alpaca farm and turns everything—including your sanity—an otherworldly shade of neon pink? The short answer: nothing good. The longer answer: a Nicolas Cage meltdown, a hallucinogenic light show, and more mutated alpacas than you’d ever expect from a Lovecraft adaptation.
Directed by Richard Stanley, this film is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s story about a family’s rural life going spectacularly awry after a mysterious meteorite hits their farm. The Gardners, led by Nicolas Cage’s Nathan and Joely Richardson’s Theresa, find themselves battling bizarre and increasingly terrifying phenomena as their well water becomes tainted, their land gets weirdly, well… alive, and they start unraveling along with the fabric of reality itself. What’s the cosmic lesson? Stay away from extraterrestrial rocks—especially ones that glow like a rave party.
Stanley’s Color Out of Space leans heavily into the theme of cosmic horror, a hallmark of Lovecraft’s work. The real terror here isn’t just the threat of death or madness—it’s the creeping realization that we’re all insignificant in a vast, uncaring universe. The film is a psychedelic meditation on nature’s destructive forces, but it’s also about the fragility of family ties when things go really south. And yes, the “color” itself, an indescribable hue that warps everything it touches, is Stanley’s attempt to visually interpret the unnamable dread that Lovecraft was so fond of. Spoiler: it mostly involves a lot of pink.
Stanley’s direction is nothing short of bold—he bathes the screen in neon hues and trippy visuals that feel like a fever dream you can’t wake from. The film’s aesthetic is pure gonzo: bright, psychedelic, and unsettling. Whether it’s the grotesque body horror mutations or Cage’s increasingly erratic behavior, the visuals support the sense of growing chaos. Stanley also uses the score, composed by Colin Stetson, to crank up the unease, layering eerie soundscapes over every warped frame.
Nicolas Cage, as always, is in his own orbit. He oscillates between deadpan weirdness and full-blown mania, particularly as his character unravels in the second half. Cage’s performance is almost a film within a film—it’s hard to say if he’s battling the alien force or just his own unique brand of madness. Joely Richardson plays the weary, emotionally strained wife well, though she often feels sidelined by the more bizarre antics surrounding her. Meanwhile, Madeleine Arthur’s Lavinia is your typical goth teen dabbling in witchcraft (because why not?), and Tommy Chong as a stoner hermit is exactly the sort of absurd casting this film thrives on.
At nearly two hours, the film drags in parts, especially in its drawn-out exposition. The pacing feels uneven—there are long stretches where not much happens, punctuated by moments of high-strangeness that can feel like too much, too fast. The plot tends to meander, which, while fitting for a story about creeping madness, leaves some scenes feeling redundant or underdeveloped.
Watching Color Out of Space is like trying to survive a bad acid trip while your eccentric uncle (played by Cage, naturally) tries to convince you that alpacas are the future of farming. It’s not so much terrifying as it is deeply unsettling, like being forced to confront the existential dread of the universe in your living room—except with more pink goo and laser beams. On some level, the film’s depiction of a family unraveling under pressure feels familiar, though, hopefully, without the alien horror.
This is not a film for everyone. Fans of Lovecraftian horror, Nicolas Cage’s more unhinged performances, or just plain weird cinema will find much to chew on here. Others may be put off by the movie’s uneven pacing and the sheer strangeness of it all. Still, for those in the right frame of mind (read: expecting weird), it’s a trip worth taking. Just don’t get too attached to the alpacas.
