Colour Out Of Space Film Review

Color Out of Space is a very interesting exercise in cosmic horror and marks the return of the fairly notorious director Richard Stanley best known for films such as The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Hardware (1990) as well as Dust Devil (1992). For the most part, Color Out of Space is a great piece of cosmic horror with the perfect amount of camp and zany practical and visual effects. It's spearheaded by the wonderfully insane Nicolas Cage who fully channels his weird energy. He ends up delivering a performance that blends the sheer rage and chaos of 2018s Mandy and the pure camp of his earlier works such as 1988s Vampire's Kiss. In this, he plays a father trying to keep his family together as the world around them slowly mutates and becomes crazier and crazier after a mysterious space object crash lands in front of their house. It's clear that Cage knows the type of film he's in and gives a beautiful unhinged performances that is an utter delight to watch and leads to some insane cage-tastic moments. 


On top of this, the film doesn't feel very long and moves by at a somewhat brisk pace but slows down at the perfect moments to help create the eerie atmosphere felt throughout the film as well as to ramp up the paranoia that the audience feels. Visually the film is mostly pretty great, there is some great use of neon lighting and towards the third act, the film hits that cosmic horror aesthetic and is a blast to take in. The utilization of practical effects is great and it gives off those classic 80s horror flick vibe, however, these practical effects quickly are overshadowed by mediocre CGI visuals that broke my immersion in the film a few times. The film doesn't solely rely on jump scares and makes use of other methods that freaked me out, such as the use of body horror, gruesome imagery, and slow-burn build-ups. 


In my opinion, by far the biggest shortcoming with The Color Out Of Space is that the script is very clunky and the dialogue feels extremely amateur. Characters constantly act illogical and talk like walking stereotypes and the effects of this is that most of the cast, aside from Nicolas Cage, give pretty bad performances and frankly I don't blame them as they don't have much to work with, the writing on the rest of the family isn't campy or zany which would allow for some crazy performances and at the same time nor is the writing realistic enough at all to allow genuinely good dramatic performances.
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Overall, while the film weighted down by a fairly clunky script. Causing some bad dialogue which ends up causing some truly mediocre and amateur performances. Color Out Of Space is a solid cosmic horror thriller film with a crazy performance by Nicolas Cage and some great moments of horror.

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