[Updated on August 2, 2024, to confirm the release date’s accuracy.]
The first image from Richard Stanley’s 2019 film Color Out of Space has been revealed, and it’s beautifully unsettling. The adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 short story “The Color Out of Space” focuses on a town that is struck by a meteorite, causing catastrophic fallout. Color Out of Space, starring Nicholas Cage, is set to release in January 24, 2020 in the US.
For those unaware of H.P. Lovecraft’s works and thus unaware of what to expect from this film, Lovecraft was a 1920s horror author known for his emphasis on cosmic horror, or the fear of the unknown. It’s a notoriously tough genre to pull off, when the genre is dominated by some of Lovecraft’s now more cliché creations like Cthulhu. It can be tough to really nail cosmic horror without coming across as vaguely trope-y and hokey. That being said, some films have pulled it off, as was the case with 2018’s Annihilation.
It’s no small wonder, then, that the aesthetic of Color Out of Space looks so far as it would be right at home in Garland’s film; something about that shimmer and shade of violet is oddly unsettling.
This won’t be the first time “The Color Out of Space” will be adapted to the big screen; 2010 saw director Huan Vu try his hand at the story in a mostly black-and-white German film of the same name, and Patrick Müller gave the film the experimental treatment in 2017 when he shot his take on LomoChrome 16mm film. This go-around seems like it’ll be a bit more traditional, appearing to ditch the arthouse treatment to simply tell the story in the twisted, vaguely insane way it was meant to be told.
