Color Out of Space Reviews

Summary After a meteorite lands in the front yard of their farm, Nathan Gardner (Nicolas Cage) and his family find themselves battling a mutant extraterrestrial organism as it infects their minds and bodies, transforming their quiet rural life into a technicolor nightmare.

• Horror

• Mystery

• Sci-Fi

• Thriller

Past the surface flaws of Color Out of Space, there are shiny Cage diamonds to be found.

Using shape-shifting as a messy metaphor for sickness and childhood trauma, Stanley and Cage leap so far over the psychological top that they never come back to earth. By the end, my own eyeballs hadn’t changed color, but they must have looked like pinwheels.

Yes. Everything about it, yes. Its slow paced and that builds up both suspense and a hint of action before the ending. It is scary, disturbing, and the colors and acting is great. Would 100% recommend.

This movie gives it all with a weird, crazy, and horrific vibe. Definitely a must watch for Nick Cage and the rest of the cast.

Color Out of Space is a trashy, ridiculous science fiction/horror film. It is silly, poorly written and, well, I liked it.

What distinguishes the latest Cage freak-out is the care with which it’s paced; not until halfway through does he start to lose his hinge, and, even when his face is sprayed with blood, he keeps his glasses on, as if hoping to settle down with a book. Oh, and, if you’ve always wanted to watch him milk an alpaca, your time has come.

The B-movie king is in rare form in Color Out of Space, a sci-fi thriller that might have been titled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Magenta” had horror icon H.P. Lovecraft been born a lot later, and — you know — had a sense of humor.

Entertaining but uneven, the result is a deliberately over-the-top sci-fi horror exercise that loses some focus as the action grows more psychedelically unhinged — its oscillating tone not necessarily helped by Nicolas Cage growing likewise, in one of his less inspired gonzo-style performances.

It’s not much of a story, so understandably, it’s not much of a movie, either. But for shock effects, the aliens that descend upon the Gardners are admirably grotesque and some of the special effects are admittedly hair-raising.

A phenomenal feat of film making. Richard Stanley has taken Lovecraft’s horrifically imaginative story and turned it into a psychedelic nightmare on the screen. A total barrage on the senses, it’s a pleasure to endure as a viewer.

I enjoyed this movie because of how disturbing it is, but it was definitely average.

Fascinating concept surprisingly well realised on the 'tiny' $12 million budget. The cast is great with some decent cinematography. There is a 10/10 movie in here and while the scale of the projects visual effects is noticeably variable in quality, it was the tonal shifts that I found spoiled its pacing affecting my enjoyment. Add in he usual sci-fi horror tropes and things went stale quicker than I'd hoped. Still worth a long for any genre fans though!

Intriguing at first, pure farce by the end - essentially just a poor man's Annihilation, with the doghouse scene from The Thing directly copied in for good measure There are some early signs of promise; the initial meteorite discovery is entertaining, and a scene where Nic Cage watches himself being interviewed by local news is played for comedy just right - but very quickly you realise that nothing is going to be answered, the story is going nowhere, none of the characters matter or do anything that matters, and every beat is either completely predictable because it's lifted from better movies, or so bat**** nonsensical that even the actors don't seem sure what the movie is doing Nicolas Cage puts in as baffling a performance as you'd expect (complete with a bizarre valley girl affectation when he's supposed to be channelling his abusive father, which ends up being the exact opposite of menacing), the story jumps from one cliched horror trope to the next with no real structure or narrative payoff of any kind, characters make utterly nonsensical decisions (one character inexplicably commits suicide by climbing down a well that they know is where the alien lives, despite being about to escape the farm when the scene begins), none of the dialogue at any point sounds remotely like a human being in conversation, and there's even an ultra-cheap and totally out of place jump-scare just to complete the bingo sheet of lazy horror tropes Predictable and downright laughable garbage past the first 20 minutes; if you're entertained by a bunch of 'spooky' things happening but get confused by story or characters getting in the way of every cliche possible, then this is the movie for you!

Does the movie look great? Absolutely. Did the cast do a good job? Yup. That isn't why I rate this movie low. I rate it low because it is incredibly predictable and very slow-paced, especially in the first and third acts. Color Out Of Space does everything you expect it to and it never breaks from that predictability. It's the kind of movie that could have been so much better if they had tried to do more to spice things up. Instead, We got a very straight-forward movie that doesn't really warrant watching.

CinEuphoria Awards

• 1 Win & 3 Nominations

Fangoria Chainsaw Awards

• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations