In cinemas on Friday

IT’S a little too long, but this instant cult classic could be the best-ever H.P Lovecraft adaptation.

Director Richard Stanley is the right man to turn the author’s 1927 short story into a horror movie, and it’s hard to think of a leading man better suited to “weird fiction” than Nicolas Cage.

The story centres on the Gardner family, who have moved from the city to a house in the woods of rural Massachusetts. Awkward dad Nathan is eking out a living as an alpaca farmer; stock-dealer wife Theresa (Joely Richardson) is the breadwinner. Their eldest kids Benny (Brendan Meyer) and hippy teen daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) are finding their new home too sleepy. Things perk up when a meteorite lands in the garden. Youngest child Jack (Julian Hilliard) starts talking to an imaginary friend, the animals begin acting up, Nathan gets weirder and the film becomes flooded with an eerie pink light.

There are some truly gruesome scenes but Stanley never tries to explain what Lovecraft saw as the inexplicable.