“West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight…”

With this evocative statement, H.P. Lovecraft takes readers into the world of “The Colour Out of Space,” one of his best short stories. It’s told from the perspective of an unnamed surveyor who attempts to discover what happened to this once beautiful land that’s been reduced to a “blasted heath.” Richard Stanley’s adaptation opens on a similar note, as a hydrologist (this time named) describes the Gardner’s land. But from here, he remixes the story in ways that feel very faithful to the source material but also spread out in beautiful ways, much like the alien flowers in the story.

The Gardner family lives in a secluded wooded area that I can only describe as “painterly.” Even with modern trappings like cell phones and televisions, their farmland feels set apart from time, as if the world outside of their verdant glen has passed them by. We’re first introduced to Lavinia Gardner (Madeleine Arthur), donned in flowery robes and a riding cape, her hair cinched in a fairytale-esqe knot, as she recites a Wiccan spell. Standing in a circle of stones in front of a picturesque, gently flowing river, she calls upon the elemental powers to heal her suffering mother…and take her away from here. Nearby, her horse slowly whips its tail..

Lavinia has two brothers. Benny (Brendan Meyer) is the eldest and likes to sneak off to the little home of local hermit Ezra (Tommy Chong) to smoke weed. Her younger brother is the precocious Jack (Julian Hilliard) who looks down the family’s well because “Dad said if you look down there long enough, you’ll see stars.” Finally, Nathan Gardner (Nicolas Cage) and Theresa (Joely Richardson) are the parental units who feel like the kind of parents straight out of some Young Adult perfect family. Nathan paints and raises Alpacas because they are, according to him, the animals of the future. Theresa suffers from cancer but it doesn’t stop her from working as a high-powered online commodities trader job. It’s a perfectly atypical family. The kind that loves each other unconditionally, but isn’t afraid of playfully poking at each other.

That is until a meteor crashes right outside their doorstep in a bright explosion of, well, colors out of space. Over the course of a few days, the meteor turns to ash and then dissolves but it has infected the land. Pinkish flowers start to sprout out of the ground and the well. The cosmic horror starts spreading, infecting their farmland and the family. First the Gardners start acting weird.

Jack’s interest in the well becomes a hypnotic obsession as he becomes insistent that there’s a man in the well who’s talking to him. Meanwhile, a piercing noise assaults Lavinia, driving her to crank her music louder and louder to try and shut it out and Benny starts loses track of time in the wilderness, his chores ignored. A local hydrologist named Ward (Elliot Knight) tests the water, the litmus strips turning a bright neon pink, and warns them not to drink the water. Earlier, Lavinia bemoaned, “why don’t we drink bottled water like normal people,” but now it’s too late. The Gardners have drunk the water and something alien begins to transform their lives.

A moment early in the story, Cage’s Nathan holds his wife and murmurs, “A dream you dream alone is just a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” It’s a perfect summation of Stanley and Scarlett Amaris’s script adaptation. It has a dream-like quality that slowly turns into a nightmare as some cosmic force begins pulling pieces out of the Jenga tower of the Gardner’s lives. Here, the narrative is at its best as Stanley slowly parcels out the mysteries and allows the story to slowly burn with foreboding. It starts small, as the life at the farm decays. Plants turn to ash. A cracked egg is full of bloody yolk. As Stanley tightens the screws, the afflicition becomes more pronounced and affects each family member in different ways. An early standout involves Theresa quickly chopping carrots and ends with a proclamation of, “dinner’s ready!” that’s as gleeful in its insanity as its bloodletting.

Before long, The Thing-esqe body horror and pure madness starts overtaking the more relatively down-to-earth, paranoia-fueled tension. In an odd switch, for the longest time Nic Cage seems to be playing the straight man to his family’s quickly deteriorating sanity. But soon he, too, must do That Thing That Nic Cage Does and his typical gonzo performance feels out of place. I know some love his audacious antics and, honestly, in the right movie, they work for me. But here, the creeping madness felt deflated as Cage adopts a speech pattern and vocal tic that’s supposed to be his father but feels like a Trump parody. Fans of the actor’s “Cageness” will no doubt enjoy it (and laugh) when he gets to let loose, but it just didn’t work for me.

The effects are a mix practical and surprisingly decent and effective CG. I loved the set designs and the staging and particularly the sound design, especially as the body horror gets gnarly in the finale. It’s beautifully shot and the script is fantastically faithful. And honestly, it’s nice to see Richard Stanley back with high-concept genre fare. While he’s directed a number of shorts and documentaries since being unceremoniously fired from The Island of Dr. Moreau, he’s been in a kind of purgatory. So to come back swinging must feel as great to him as it is for his fans.

Color Out of Space is probably the best H.P. Lovecraft adaptation I’ve seen by (mostly) nailing the tone of his works and presenting a representation of cosmic horror that could believably turn a sane person mad. It’s Stanley’s most accomplished work and I hope this is just the beginning of his resurgence.