Color out of Space

 

This weekend I chose to watch Color out of Space (2019) by Richard Stanley based on the short story The Color out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft.

I find that this is a hard movie to critique. On the one hand it is a very faithful adaptation and on the other hand it does it's own thing entirely. It ramps up the timetable from the original story from many months to a few days and it changes the principal characters a great deal, but not critically so.

The story in a nutshell is that a meteorite crashes down on the Gardner farm, and the weird unearthly color that lived in it starts to change not only the landscape but also the animals and people living there. The film follows this, no problems.

The film is set in today's world, not in the 1920's, but that is okay. Much of Lovecraft's work concerns alien horrors from beyond the gulf of time and space, so what does a hundred years matter? When you are confronted with an entity that can warp both time and your flesh, a smart phone won't make a difference.

Visually the movie is amazing, likewise the sound design. Both are standout in my opinion, really first class. This creates a great atmosphere that carries the movie through to the end with style.

The acting is good. Not brilliant but good enough. Even Nicholas Cage is good here. I find his work to be very varied, sometimes great and other times awful. He is solid here.

My biggest problems are the dialog and the characters. Most of the dialog is uninteresting and seems to be there more to fill the silence than to say something.

The characters are pretty awful, especially in the beginning. The movie does very little to make us like them. Yes, there are some early scenes that establishes them and their relationships which are both fine and needed, but they are such a bunch of jackasses. This is the movies biggest flaw, and makes the first third a bit hard to watch. After that, it gets much better and the ending was really good.

There were also a few scenes that really needed some more time in the editing room. For example when the meteorite has landed, the sheriff and mayor show up to look at it. They arrive, the sheriff pokes it with a stick and they leave. That's it, utterly pointless scene. In the original story, scientist arrive and take samples and give a lot of interesting insight into just how alien the thing really is. No such luck here. There's also a scene where the daughter stands about twenty yards from a series of lightning strikes and revels in how pretty it is. In reality she would have been knocked on her ass and suffered damage to her hearing. Those things are loud! And don't ask about the alpacas, I have no idea why they added alpacas to the story.

All in all Color out of Space was better than I thought it would be. After all, how do you make a movie about a color that no one has ever seen before? I recommend it to all Lovecraft fans, most horror fans and some other viewers who want something different.

Finally, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to recommend you watch the in-depth review by Deusdeacon on Youtube. He has really delved deep into this movie and all it's minor details. If you've seen the movie or you are just a bit curious, watch the video. If you intend to watch Color yourself, don't watch the video, it spoils everything. I'll include it below.

That is that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then stay safe and have a great week!

 Deusdeacon's review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCRlAPBtWx4