Dan Abel’s review published on Letterboxd:
Alpacas!
I read H.P. Lovecraft's short story in anticipation for the day I'd watch and review this film. I'm not much of a reader anymore and I find Lovecraft's writing style to be a chore to read but I love his stories so I tend to favor the adaptations via movies and video games as my vessel for enjoying his work. By the time I finished that read I was extremely excited to watch this. I almost rented it until I read that Shudder got the streaming rights so I waited. And waited. Now it's here!
One night a meteor falls from the sky and crashes in the front yard of the Gardner family. Upon investigation they see that its glowing magenta. The next night there is a big thunderstorm and the meteor attracts lighting to strike it many times until it's destroyed. This frees the entity inside to take up residence in the well where it immediately begins to infect the water everything around it, turning the plants on the property magenta and even growing new extraterrestrial ones over the course of a few days. The entity can also manipulate time and magnetic fields. And then there is the matter of what it does to animals and other living things like The Gardner family...
Richard Stanley is back and he delivers a pretty decent Lovecraft adaptation. I don't have too many complaints but the biggest is probably how the first forty-five minutes are a slow burn that deliver quite a few unnecessary segments that don't do much to keep things interesting. Stanley could have easily cut fifteen mins and nonsense out and delivered a better paced experience. We get those Nicholas Cage meltdowns that are expected of him at least once per film and the supporting cast around him is solid. The colors used are pretty awesome and create an interesting environment as the farm is transformed into an alien landscape. The body horror special FX are pretty good too with wet, gooey looking mutations that hearken back to the glory days of the 1980s.
It's been said that Richard Stanley will be directing two more adaptations and after the financial loss this suffered I am really hoping they let him continue. I wasn't amazed with this film but I wasn't disappointed either. If you're a fan of Lovecraft stuff or Nicholas Cage ridiculousness you're in for a good time.
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