Colors out of Space – H.P. Lovecraft tale…

I have never seen Nicolas Cage as a bad actor. When looking around on the internet you can find many people clinging to that opinion though. They say that the movie would be so much better with another leading actor. For me, that has never been an issue. On the contrary, I have always regarded him as a fine actor and the movie in which he appears to be entertaining. Obviously not all of them but most of what I have seen has been ok. Considering that Color Out of Space originally is a story crafted by HP Lovecraft I thought that this couldn’t go wrong. I love the universe in which many of HP Lovecraft’s stories takes place. I also like the way that he describes the environment without describing it. It’s hard to put a finger on that one.

But…Nicolas Cage is not good in this one. He may not ruin the story, to begin with, but when things start to happen for real he over-acts so bad that it’s really annoying watching him perform. I keep wishing for his character to die so that we can get rid of him. I don’t want to rely on an actor to do the magic when the story is penned by the great H.P. Lovecraft. The story should do the work and not acting. I think most of us Lovecraft fans would agree that the strength and oddity of the stories are the fantastic part, not individual characters.

Unfortunately Color Out of Space has a very slow and uninteresting start. I’d say that the first hour or so is really dull. There’s nothing interesting happening whatsoever. There’s a meteor crashing in the garden and there are strange colors (duh?!) surrounding it. People around changes and the crop starts to grow at rapid speed. Of course, that is a mystery to itself but hardly horrifying. It’s mostly boring, to be honest.

The second half of the movie is better, apart from Nicolas Cage’s constant over-acting. There’s som real terror sneaking up on you and you feel that the story is very Lovecraftian. It becomes suspensive and all details might not be totally clear. I mean, the large picture of what’s going to happen is pretty clear, but some of the details are interpretable, making the film ok overall. Oh, and Tommy Chng makes a side-kick job in the movie. I think that’s actually my favorite character.

The story has been filmed a few times before. Die, Monster, Die! (1965) and The Curse (1987) comes to mind.