Version I saw: DVD release
Actors: 5/10
Plot/script: 5/10
Photography/visual style: 7/10
Music/score: 5/10
Overall: 5/10
Lots 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.
Actors: 5/10
Plot/script: 5/10
Photography/visual style: 7/10
Music/score: 5/10
Overall: 5/10
Lots 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.