Color Out of Space

After decades in the feature-film wilderness following his ignominious sacking from The Island of Dr Moreau (1996), director Richard Stanley makes a welcome return with an acid-trip tale of metamorphic terror adapted from an HP Lovecraft short story. Nicolas Cage convinces as a quirky urbanite-turned-farmer, who has persuaded his high-flying wife (Joely Richardson) and three children to decamp to a backwoods Massachusetts property in order to breed alpacas. That offbeat premise then takes a turn for the psychedelic when a mysterious meteorite crash-lands on their property and triggers mind-bending changes to the surrounding flora and fauna, and the family themselves. The star keeps his inner-Cage under control (mostly) - he's not in manic mode here as with 2018's Mandy. Meanwhile, Stanley delivers the visual verve that made his 1990s flicks Hardware and Dust Devil such cult fare. Budgetary limitations prevent this eye-catching adaptation from rivalling the gooey body-horror heights of The Thing or Re-Animator, but the Lovecraftian ethos of esoteric horror and looming dread is pervasive throughout.