Review of Color Out of Space (2020) by Castlegrey — 19 Apr 2021

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! Expand.