That was an excellent one.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

"Die Farbe" or "The Colour Out of Space" is a German, (mostly) German-language film from 2010 and so far the most recent work by Vietnamese writer and director Huan Vu, his second full feature film. "Writer" is of course only partially correct here as the base material comes from the fairly famous American writer H.P. Lovecraftand Vu adapted his work for the screen here. I have not read Lovecraft's work, but I am sure that his involvement with the project is the main reason why this film is actually somewhat known still. It is not too long, only runs for 80 minutes (without credits) and is almost exclusively in black-and-white. It is the story of a man looking for his father and the strange occurrences he meets on the way. The film does not really deliver through great story-telling, but in my opinion it is all about the haunting atmosphere in here. There were some scenes that were okay to watch, but overall I was not too impressed. The scene with the huge insect gave me the chills though, now that was some scary stuff for sure. But it is just not enough for a film of this runtime and maybe half the runtime could have been a better choice. Anyway, after seeing this one I cannot say I am particularly sad about Vu's lack of filmmaking in the last six years as the movie did not get me curious about other works from him. The ending wasn't that great either and the sudden inclusion of color into black-and-white films has been done better on many occasions. This film came out shortly after the very successful "Das weiße Band" (Haneke), another black-and-white movie, and I wonder if this inspired Vu perhaps to make this creative choice as well. Anyway, the outcome here is underwhelming. I give it a thumbs-down and do not recommend checking it out.

This one should be on the list of anyone who loves Lovecraft. While this one doesn't have any of the more well known Mythos in it...it's a measured telling of what is actually a Tale of the Unknown more than it is a Horror Story.The use of Black & White may look cheap, but it fits with the tone and tenor of the era that it was set in. Color TV did not exist then. The CGI may look simple...but the focus of the story is the people and the 'Colour'. Sometimes when the FX is stunning...you only see the FX and not the story. And Good Horror is more than simply good CGI.The Telling of the story as a mix of English and German with Subtitles was a different experience, but it didn't subtract from the tale, because the story moves slowly enough that the subtitles are there long enough to be read and become pseudo-invisible. Besides, a hallmark of Lovecraft is that most of the stories are a RE-TELLING of past events thru the witness's eyes and memory Again-- this one is a slower, langourous story. Told through the eyes of the German farmboy who grew up when the meteor came down. And I dare say, the film makers polished and filled in some of the blanks of the original short story. There is no scientific explication by any of the characters here, but you will see that what happened was the intersection of the Earthly with the UN-Earthly...and unfortunately and tragically for the people in the valley...the presence of the Unearthly is just simply inimical to earthbound Life.This one is good for a Late, after midnight viewing on Saturday night.

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.

This is an amazingly precise adaption of Lovecraft's novel. The Black & white, together with the slow pace and sober atmosphere of the whole movie, works well in creating an atmosphere that really comes close to reading H.P. Lovecraft. There is one major mistake though that I think spoils the whole film: Language! The main part of the story is set to a remote village in or near the Black Forest, which absolutely makes sense. But in such a place, given the 1930's, people would speak dialect, except perhaps the scientists. In the film they don't! As a result, the spoken language sounds dry and synthetic, like a bad synchronization. (Compared to this, the obviously German actor playing an American is minor, and when the young man tries to speak "bad German with American accent", it's simply hilarious. - If they couldn't find or afford appropriate actors, why didn't they make it a silent movie? Maybe only native German speakers will notice that, but as far as I am concerned, this flaw prevented me until now from watching "Die Farbe" a second time. Which is a pity, because everything else is really well made and congenial to H.P. Lovecraft's style - something that can't be said about many HPL adaptations.