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Ever wake up from a vivid dream and wonder whether or not it really happened? The feeling of the dream is so real, yet the evidence and logic of it is completely lacking. It takes a few minutes for this feeling to subside, and sometimes the haunting thought that something happened lingers for days. Life goes on, a day just like any other, only with an hint of disquiet, just beneath the surface.
We find ourselves collectively waking up from a bad dream as the world reopens for summer and people begin considering beach houses and barbecues once more. New York City is still in a somnolent state — for now — but pictures of wild pool parties from the Lake of the Ozarks filter in and the anchor on the morning news casually mentions that Vegas is welcoming back craps addicts, only with “social distancing” protocols in place (as if). Eventually that switch will be flipped in the nation’s major cities as well. One day businesses will be closed and people will be loath to ride the subway, and the next they’ll be swiping their Metrocards and shopping at Soho boutiques.
Our era has become a waking dream. One moment there is a pandemic, and the next, you can go bowling and get a tattoo in Atlanta. The President of the United States is on Twitter accusing TV anchor Joe Scarborough of murdering a former assistant (he did not). Meanwhile, the denizens of the internet are striking back at Trump by circulating an entirely fictitious claim that he murdered an entirely fabricated assistant named “Carolyn Gombell,” who, the story goes, was pregnant with his lovechild. The fictitious story concludes that Trump covered up the murder of the entirely made-up Carolyn Gombell by bribing the chief of police of New York City.
Point is, the real world right now doesn’t feel entirely real. While Carolyn Gombell may be fake, the circulation of the story is an actual fact. Scarborough didn’t kill his assistant — she died of a heart condition — but it is a fact that many, including the President apparently, believe that he did. There’s no waking up from this dream either. But perhaps we can still shake off the feeling, remind ourselves what is real, and go out and enjoy some of that brilliant late spring sunshine for once.
Today’s Film: Color Out of Space (2019)
Oh boy. Where to even being? Color Out of Space is an adaptation of horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 tale The Colour Out of Space. In the short story, a meteorite falls in a remote “blasted heath” in Massachusetts called Arkham. The meteorite then breeds some sort of demonic alien possession that manifests as an unnamable shade of light, chokes out the life in the region and drives the inhabitants of a small farm insane. The movie follows this basic plot, but with a contemporary update that includes cell phones and a harebrained idea to farm alpacas. Directed by pulp master Richard Stanley and starring Nicolas Cage at his most deranged, the film is a profoundly disturbing, phantasmagorical journey into the unknown.
I want to be extraordinarily clear about something: This is not a film for everyone. It is extremely weird, dripping with eldritch horrors and with some absolutely batty performances from Cage, Tommy Chong and two young but talented actors, Madeleine Arthur and Brendan Meyer. As the color creeps out of a well where it has taken up residence and into the farm, the residents — human and animal alike — start to lose their grip on reality, and the natural world itself starts to become noxious. Body horror ensues, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
Fans of Lovecraft’s ouvre and science fiction and horror aficionados will find a lot to like here, however. There’s an element of science to a horror and a lot of mystery to the science. Like many great genre works, it twists the story and characters around until you’re not sure who the biggest threats are — the people or the alien. Stanley and writer Scarlett Amaris also made a smart choice in presenting the residents of the farm as already being a bit, erm, out of touch with reality. The initial sense of people living on the edge of sanity allows the film to spool out suspense every so slowly and keeps the audience guessing about what is “real” in this world. Is there really an alien in the well? Or is Nic Cage just totally off his rocker?
Perhaps most importantly, this movie looks really good. Lovecraft never names the color in the story, leaving the look and feel of the alien force entirely in the hands of the filmmakers. (Aesthetically, the film owes a serious debt to Alex Garland’s 2019 film Annihilation.) Poorly executed production design or an overly slavish dedication to the source material would have rendered the movie boring, unwatchable, or both. Instead, it is both beautiful and terrifying.
Color Out of Space is available to rent on YouTube, Amazon Prime Video and various other platforms.
Reading List:
Stanley Ho, the gambling kingpin of Macau, just passed away leaving billions of dollars and an embattled empire on the casino island just off the coast of Hong Kong. The Times has the obit.
Breaking news from the Onion: “High Production Values Most Suspicious Part Of Conspiracy Theory Video”.
Finally, Gothamist has a roundup of the 45 best live sketches from SNL’s most recent season. In light of today’s film, I’d like to call particular attention to No. 2, which involves some… colour.
Benjamin Reeves is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist and media consultant based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Twitter @bpreeves or write to him at breeves.writer@gmail.com.