Review #183: Color Out of Space (2019)

This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #38: Color Out of Space (2019)

Color Out of Space is based on an HP Lovecraft short story, and it follows a family living out in the sticks whose land is hit by a meteorite, that emits this "strange, unknown color" (Spoilers: it's pink. In the movie, it's just pink) that has strange, reality- and sanity-warping effects on the things around it.

This is the second time I've watched this film, but the first time that I watched it in full. Previously, I literally fell asleep halfway through. At the time I thought it was because I had just eaten, and was sleepy, or something, and that the movie was probably fine; especially because I'd heard so many good things about it. And while I definitely had a better viewing this time around- I watched the whole thing, don't worry- the entire first half I couldn't shake this feeling that something about it, something I couldn't quite put my finger on, was just unbearably dull? It got better some time after the halfway point, but for the first 45 minutes at least, all of the dialogue is bad. All of the characters just say whatever their character is thinking at that moment, with no nuance or subtext. Nothing about any of their personalities is particularly interesting or engaging. Nicolas Cage seems to alternate his line reads with normal speech, and what sounds like a Donald Trump impression. Add on to all of this that the "color" that is "out of space" takes most of the movie's runtime before we have ANY concrete indication of what it does. Does it distort time? Sort of. Does it mess with people's minds? I guess. Does it alter a creature's biology? Sometimes! For a movie this long I really don't think it does any favors to wait half the film before anything abnormal definitely happens.

Once it does get going, though, it becomes engaging and terrifying. I love all of the individual things that the color does, I just wish there was more of all of it. I really liked how (for at least a portion of the film) the characters seem to be freaking out like I think real people would, acknowledging that the happenings around their home are NOT normal, and that they need to get away from it rather than stick around. (It doesn't work out for them, of course, but it felt like there was appropriate weight given to their reactions.) On one hand I wish some of the fluff were cut out and this were edited down to like a 45-minute short film, or on the other hand I wish it were extended into a miniseries, except with more concrete stuff happening to actually merit the length. Like a lot of Lovecraft media there's some great content in there, some great ideas, I just think the execution leaves a bit to be desired.

And if you do watch this film, let me know if you thought the first half was as strangely dull as I did!

Overall Rating: 7/10 Alpaca Boobs

Truth In Fiction: While I don't know this for certain, I'm pretty sure there's a reason they chose pink for the "strange color" in the story. Obviously a new color that humans have never seen before works a lot better in a book than a movie (because one is a visual medium, and visual media kind of necessitates that a visual thing be, you know, visible), but there's actually a kind of logic behind making it pink. As you know, when we see colors, it's because we're seeing light of that color bounce off of the objects around us. Red things reflect red light, blue things reflect blue light, white things reflect all colors of light, all along the spectrum of visible colors the human eye can perceive- but "pink light" isn't actually a thing. When you see pink, you're not seeing pink light, you're seeing a mix of red light and violet light. So if you were making a movie about an unnatural light that doesn't normally exist, pink makes sense!