The Color Out of Space (2010)

Version I saw: DVD releaseActors: 5/10Plot/script: 5/10Photography/visual style: 7/10Music/score: 5/10Overall: 5/10Lots of low-budget attempts have been made to film the work of H.P. Lovecraft but, aside from Re-Animator, nothing with any particular profile. Whether studios are scared of his reputation as a racist, or his old-fashioned, stilted prose, we so far have to settle for productions like this German one if we want to see his considerable legacy on screen.Lovecraft's story 'The Colour Out of Space' is set in a rural New England village where a meteorite crashes, and spreads a malign influence that poisons everything and everyone around it. I remember it striking me that this could be read as a fanciful exaggeration of the way radioactive material can contaminate an area, but I digress.For this movie, writer/director Huan Vu has retained the New England setting and period, although he makes the questionable decision to add that the community is a German American one, thus allowing them to get away with dialogue in German as well as a wild variation of accent quality on the English lines. The acting in general is not exactly of the highest quality. The period setting does allow a parade of fashionable waistcoats though, and a generally hipsterish look to the costumes.The decision to film in black and white is part of what seems to me by far the best aspect of the film. In the novella, the very nature of the artifact, its sheer other-worldliness, is what causes its toxic effect, and specifically its never-before-seen colour. Well, we know what colour is now, and what lies at its limits, so filming it is a problem. Vu gets around this by making the object the only thing that has colour in a black-and-white world, a touch of visual invention that I wholeheartedly applaud. It combines with some other cinematic touches to impressive effect.The pacing is a problem, and I am not sure a feature length film was the right medium for this story. What is added is not unambiguously good either.All in all, a mixed bag. A good attempt, and I hope they try again, but this is not quite the Lovecraft adaptation we have been waiting for.

I came across this flick at a German horror convention were the director was selling this flick. Supporting independent flicks I gave it a try but somehow it took me 5 years to plug it in. Why now, because nowadays it's available in the US and it got some great reviews in magazines so it was time to watch it.Shot in B/W it did add something towards this Lovecraftian story. It's a low budget flick but it's well done i must say. They went for the story and not for too much effects so the B/W did add towards the atmosphere. It's slow, that's a fact but once the weirdness enters the story it's okay. People who love Lovecraft should pick this up because it do stays really close to the story. But not only that, the editing and filming is above mediocre. The only thing that I had problems with is with the CGI used. It was rather cheapie and it shows. So on part of story it's excellent but towards the end the CGI makes it a bit lame. Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

Very spooky, slow. Based on a Lovecraft story.The trigger event has a meteorite landing and exhibiting inscrutable properties, diffusing into the air. It is the remnants of a craft. German scientists from the 30s — one of our most enduring stereotypes — cannot figure it out, but before it disappears, they make the mistake of breaking the sphere embedded within. A colored goo is released and joins the water.A nearby farm family with three boys come under the influence of this 'color,' and it is this deterioration that we see in our spooky parts. The film is in black and white, effectively using devices that evoke the silent era. The goo is rendered in color when we see it and that worked less well for me.The narrative structure is what sets this apart. It has story in three periods. The focus is the appearance of the goo and over a year the deterioration of the family as witnessed by a neighbor. A later period has this neighbor returning from WWII and encountering a group of occupying US GIs. Though they have no reason, and are warned, the leader decides to investigate the cursed farm. They provoke the goo in the farm's well and see it assemble and fly away from the planet. Decades later, the head GI has returned and we follow his adult son as he seeks him, encounters the now aged witness and hears everything we have seen. Meanwhile, a dam has newly been built over the infected farm and the water is rising. The son finds and gathers his now crazed father at the edge of the water.What works is having the elderly witness tell us the story from the 30s and see it in terms of films from that era. Watching the sons through this period was tough and touching. We could have had more of this and less of the brooding wife.What did not work for me:— the extra level of the soldier after WWII. This seems to be there only to tell us that the goo is still alive and to give us someone to later tell the story to. — But in this segment, we see what could be all the goo assemble into something like a spacecraft and leave. But then are we to think that some remains. The oft-murmered question of whether "it is over" is not powerful enough to affect me.— The finding of the lost father could tell us the answer to that question. He seems altered by some remaining force, or was he just suffering from what came before. We don't need answers to every question; this kind of story is better off with mysteries. But the filmmaker owes it to us to not raise unnecessary questions.

I had heard of this film, but had dismissed it, pretty much because after seeing DIE MONSTER DIE, and THE CURSE, I had decided I was done with "Colour Out of Space" knock-offs. They're nearly as bad as the "Lurking Fear" knock-offs.A friend I trust strongly recommended it to me, and so I bought a copy. I am so glad.DIE FARBE is in black and white, and it is a period piece. It takes place in three time periods – 1975, the 1930s, and finally 1945. The film-makers moved the action to Germany (where they are located), and World War II is referenced, but they did not make the mistake of having the war be the central topic.DIE FARBE is well worth seeing for any Lovecraft fan. One clever touch they achieved was that the only color in the movie is THE Colour, if you get my meaning, but even here they are very subtle. The first few times the Colour shows up it is pale, and easy to miss or (more likely) to leave you uncertain you saw anything.WHY DIE FARBE RULES The movie doesn't follow the stale Hollywood 3-act plot sequence (apparently it is taught in school nowadays, mentally shackling new generations of would-be screenwriters). Instead, the movie simply builds up a more and more ominous mood until finally horror comes to fruition.The film also doesn't follow the execrable trope of trying to explain everything either before or after the fact. It just lets the events unfold, yet remain inexplicable. Of course, this leads to confusion for spoon-fed viewers. But after all the whole point to the Colour is that we cannot understand it – it is an entity so alien that the only way it can interact with us is to feed.The sets and cinematography were excellent, in my opinion. The actors were decent, though not not world-beaters. Sometimes the film is a little slow, but that is the nature of a mood-piece. I was certainly never bored.WHY DIE FARBE DROOLS Well, it doesn't really drool. But it has a very few minor weaknesses. One is the fact that the supposedly all-American protagonist early in the film speaks English with a strong German accent. I sympathize with the film-makers. Given that he was the guy they wanted, they were stuck with his non-American nature I guess.I still liked the show though. That minor false step didn't ruin it. Check it out.