Highly Overrated But Still Good

best movie i've ever seen.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

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

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.

This is a well-done adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour out of Space". The biggest disappointments come from some poor production choices, but if you set these aside there isn't much to complain about. The story is set in Germany and effectively recreates the layered narration typical to so many HPL stories. The minor liberties taken with the story are thoughtful and even enhance the tale a bit. I'd put this on par with the 2005 silent-film "The Call of Cthulhu" as one of the best HPL adaptations ever made. Definitely check it out if you are a fan of Lovecraft or of understated horror.If you're looking for a more in-depth review, there are plenty on the web, and I've found most to be on-point and accurate.