The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: Die Farbe, or The Color Out Of Space (2010), directed by Huan Vu

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Colors in Space", by Explosions in the Sky

       While the works of H.P. Lovecraft have been enormously influential on a good portion of the world’s pop culture, inspiring comics, cartoons, novels and the occasional anime, it’s never had as much like when it comes to cinema. There’s been many a movie that’s made the claim to ‘Lovecraftian’, it’s true, but many of those movies only go as far as the body horror or fleshy tentacles before they grab their ball and go home. Even Re-Animator, a movie I’ve heaped no small amount of praise over the years, is guilty of this to a degree, although the sequels take it to another level. They’re all so obsessed with bringing visuals to indescribable beings that they forget the essence of Lovecraft’s work. The paranoia, the feelings of absolute despair and isolation, the inability to trust one’s own senses, that’s just as important to the idea of ‘Lovecrftian’ fiction, if not moreso, than a giant frog with an octopus head. Which conveniently enough leads directly to our film today. Who would have thought?

       Known in its native country of Germany as Die Farbe, Huan Vu’s The Color Out of Space is an adaptation, naturally enough, of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic short story of the same. A search for his missing father leads up-and-coming scientist Jonathan Davis to a small village in Bavaria's border. While there, he meets a man named Armin who has in fact seen his father; Not as he is in the present day however, but as he was during his days in the U.S. military during the postwar period. Quite a coincidence, and yet that coincidence was merely a part of a much larger tale. A story of a meteorite that crash-landed on a farm not too far from the village they’re in now. Not just a rock from the heavens, but one with the texture of plastic, the ability to endlessly generate heat. A rock that holds deep within its core a color. A color unlike anything ever seen on Earth before, one that grows brighter and brighter as everything around it withers into ash. Plants, animals, people, nothing is safe. Nowhere is safe.

       The Color Out of Space has been one of my favorite of Lovecraft’s stories for a long time now, and I think a part of that was due to its seemingly unfilmable nature. The scares in this scary story don’t come from a horde of rats scurrying about in the walls after all, or some giant monster rising from the sea. They come from a color, something natural and yet completely alien, and the things that happen to people and the world just by being close to it. The horror is in how non-discriminatory it is, extremely malevolent and yet seemingly as neutral as the sunset. In a world familiar with nuclear fallout, pollution and other such silent killers it hits much closer to home than it did in the time it was written. It’s also the only bit of horror literature I can recall that’s ever significantly unnerved me, so that’s another reason I hold it in such high regard. 

       Luckily, Huan Vu seems to be coming from the same direction as I am, as he treats the story with great care. The slow build from curiousity and confusion into despair and their ultimate fates is done quite well, I’d say an equal balance of show and tell. I also think the choice to film in black & white was also the correct choice. Not just in the fact that you’re covering a story from the 20s, but it gives the titular Color that much more prominence when it finally appears, even if pink isn’t a color that is inconceivable to the human mind. It’s also rather subtle, but I like the way the Color’s influence works in black and white as well, from the dark grey of life to the dusty, almost white grey of death. In look and tone, Die Farbe gets Lovecraft right.

       That being said, I found myself not really caring much for the Jonathan Davis plot, which never breaks from feeling like it was bolted onto the story in order to give an excuse for why the story is taking place in Germany rather than America. There’s also some prominent examples CGI near the end which brought me out of the film a bit. Now of course practical effects can be a strain on time and budget, and is useful for things that would be extremely difficult or impossible to do otherwise (such as the climactic last scene with the Color), but when I see something on screen that’s running at 1080p while everything around it is 720p so to speak, then I am divorced from the reality of the scene. I am made aware that this is a film, that this is an actor pretending to be scared of an empty room, and the fear and tension of the film up until that point is seriously diminished, if not killed outright. You could argue that practical effects wouldn’t look much better, but the point is that there’s a difference when something has ‘weight’ and when it doesn’t, it comes through in the performance and and ultimately in the way that the mind processes it. In my opinion anyway.

       Ultimately I did enjoy Die Farbe/The Color Out Of Space though, in spite of the times the seams were showing. The films looks great, as you’d expect from rolling countryside, the music is haunting, even overwrought at times, the cast does well (special props to the guy who plays Past Armin, as he does much of the heavy lifting), and as I said before the tone is captured right, so there’s no choice but to recommend it. Human powerlessness and insignificance in the face of an uncaring and dangerous might be a myopic and perhaps defeatist worldview, but it does make for some spooky stories as it turns out, and if that’s what you’re in for this Halloween then this is the right film for you. And remember to always stay hydrated.