Introduction

Anyone preferring to avoid spoilers of any kind or nature should consider themselves fairly warned.

What follows is merely an informal, subjective review created with my opinions. For this article, I will be discussing two pieces: first, I will focus on H. P. Lovecraft’s short story "The Colour out of Space"; after that, I will aim attention upon the movie Color Out of Space (2019), which was directed by Richard Stanley. This article and its contents are not intended to be attacks or accusations of any kind against Richard Stanley, H. P. Lovecraft, or anyone who likes their works. I wrote this article to let art evolve through discussion and criticism, and I hope it can generate an expressive conversation that blooms aesthetic ideas peacefully. In no way whatsoever have I ever intentionally designed any part of this entire review article to recommend or persuade anyone to do anything unlawful or harmful.

I believe that my review of the abovementioned works is relevant to today, and the existence of reviews like this one has become important nowadays, because human society has existed for too long in a lamentable position where disappointing and insulting adaptations, remakes, reboots, prequels, sequels, and unfaithful reimagining or recreations engulf the silver screen and filmmaking. You don’t have to agree with me; I’m only stating my opinions as respectfully as I can. Many of the brand-loyal bourgeoisie and the thriftless masses have long been addicted to the ingestion and purchasing of poor products, movies, and other commodities which are the equivalent of soulless and divisive propaganda. As well as there being an ongoing global drug epidemic hurting human civilization, human beings have become much too addicted to technology, to environmentally unfriendly motor vehicles and aircraft, to overpriced video games, to junk meals, and to tenth-rate movies. I am not necessarily against hedonism; I wish to conserve and transform beautiful aesthetics and passionate art. If there is to be decay anyway (whether natural or artificial), may it be exquisite! This modern living, our contemporary age of social media and censorship, has perhaps never really tasted splendor, or freedom for that matter. And as I have intended this review (this pas de deux, or pas de trois, depending on however you look at it) to be released in February of 2022, I thought there would be harmony in the act of comparing two Lovecraft-related works—especially since the public, the pop culture, and the Western mainstream have recently become more obsessed with Lovecraftian horror—during the second month of this year (Gregorian calendar style). Granted, it is not the season of Gemini or Libra in which I am writing this (it is still January 2022 when I am writing this), but month two is a good enough time also to think about adaptations, comparisons, duos, and twos, n'est-ce pas?

1.     "The Colour out of Space," by H. P. Lovecraft!

This short story does a fine job of bringing madness to life. An indistinct dubiousness arises from the synthesis of tone, sentiment, and pace sustained by the text, influenced by a focus on producing disquietude, which permits one the safe opportunity to harbour suspicions about the reliability and sanity of the narrator and the narration.

Is the reader shown the madness of one character, or do they witness the madness of an area? Is insanity passing back and forth between only two minds? If such is the case, how similar is that idea to the reciprocal and interconnected dynamics or relationship between text and readers? art and observer? folklore and society? movies and viewers? On the one hand, the short story taunts not only superstition but also the human receptiveness to fiction, but on the other hand, it mocks the human willingness and readiness to disregard or block out obvious, uncomfortable evidence. The nihilism of the story discards the concepts of truth and lies because they offer no avail.

What do we really know about the events of the plot? We know that there are two characters talking to each other, and one of those characters swears that a color came down from the sky, sucked the life out of everything around it, went away, and left something behind. Regardless of whether you actually believe extraterrestrial life-forms are real or you don’t, do you suppose that they exist within the imaginary setting, laws, and framework in the short story? Asking these types of questions can be vital when attempting to understand the differences between literary fiction and genre fiction, or if one is trying to pinpoint where this story hovers closest amidst the outskirts and domains of fantasy, horror, science fiction, and the weird.

In the tale, a sort of cultural identity is created around a form of devastation that gradually poisons everything—was that poison an alien or mere hallucination? Is the entire short story an example of folie à deux? Did one character’s madness spread to another? Is the alien account hokum? a joke? the result of what can happen when a community is ravaged by insanity? When I am reading this story, these are some of the engrossing questions that come to the forefront of my mind.

The monster color in this short story should be avoided or stopped. The actions of the unearthly color were atrocious and wrong, but what if it was also basically just an animal trying to survive? The story does not show a successful method for defending against it. Could it ever be truly contained or understood by humans? I am not deliberately attempting to advocate anything illegal, immoral, or hazardous. I simply believe that sometimes dangerous things can appear attractive. A lofty precipice. A tsunami. A spider’s web. A flame. At times, there is, in my opinion, a je ne sais quoi about the idea of the hypothetical existence of an otherworldly color that feels indefinably aesthetic, celestial, and sublime, yet unsafe. If that alien were real, would it look like a mixture of beauty and threat, like a hurricane or a lion or a poisonous but pretty flower? Would it be as repulsive as a disease? If one believes there was a murderous alien within the imaginary world of Lovecraft’s short story, then one might be reading a kind of existentialist account that speaks to a cynical sort of fear of the unfamiliar and of humankind’s innate weaknesses, a sort of fear that is linked to a disgust over humankind’s utter meaninglessness.

Do I recommend you read it? Yes. It is one of the better (and one of the least offensive) Lovecraft works, in my opinion.

2.     Color Out of Space, directed by Richard Stanley!

This movie virtually lacks all the philosophical and artistic strength of the original Lovecraft story on which it is based. There is something about this picture that sometimes appears more cynical than Lovecraft’s short story, which really isn’t a problem in itself: it is the way in which the cynicism was delivered that I find displeasing; the real problem for me is that the product is too much more vulgar, mundane, sarcastic, petty, and crude—and it holds each of those characteristics in conditions that spoil beauty and do no benefit to art.

And let us not forget that it shows very poor taste to ladle out an adaptation that exhibits a plethora of uninteresting alterations. To make this adaption terribly dissimilar from the original Lovecraft story, such adulteration could be considered bad form. Not every movie from long ago was perfect, but greater disillusionment and disappointment is to be expected from movies these days. Too many moviemakers today, including the indie creators and the major powers and industries of moviemaking, behave as if they only cherish moneymaking, pushing sociopolitical agendas, radical propaganda, corporate greed, and consumerist sadomasochism; that kind of behavior is the ruin of art and the duplicitous exploitation of fan base nostalgia.

My way of looking at Color Out of Space (2019) is like this: this movie demonstrations a total breakdown of humanity; it illustrates no hope in the future; and it mimics how detached, crass, feeble, and miserable human beings have become, beings that would never be able to save themselves from the threat of a malevolent color from beyond the stars. In film, that concept can prove compelling and can be conjured beautifully. Lovecraft’s writings, although they in large measure lack a certain lush succulence, could grasp such concepts and cultivate them artistically. In terms of artistry, allure, eloquence, entertainment, novelty, and scares, I believe that this motion picture is found wanting.

The events in the movie show practically everything as cancerous and nearing annihilation, and there are parts of that kind of concept that I consider interesting, and I can appreciate that essence in a film artistically. That kind of grim nihilism in a film can be fun to watch. Lovecraft’s writings did it better than Color Out of Space.

In the world within that movie—family connections have broken down, decency and modesty have dissolved, tradition has failed, law enforcement and infrastructure fail, Homo sapiens’ current level of scientific knowledge is pointless, Abrahamic religion has zero relevance, there is no comforting or meaningful indication for the benevolent and merciful existence of any Abrahamic version of the Almighty, the media are no help, the environment is unquestionably doomed, and mortals may make ostensibly worthless attempts at witchcraft. There are ways to work those concepts and threads in a wonderful, stimulating manner, but this flick does not try hard enough to make those elements interesting and spectacular. There is somewhat of a visual spectacle in the movie, but it’s hollow and shallow.

There’s almost this sort of warning hidden within the tale of Color Out of Space (2019), as if the movie were saying, “What you desire may not be given in a way you’ll expect or recognize! Do not meddle with things for which you are not prepared!” Was the daughter’s witchery worthless? Did she make things worse by using witchcraft? Was she not strong enough, or not wise enough, to handle the witching? But was it even magic to begin with? Was it bargain-basement witchcraft that summoned the alien entity? Whilst considering all those questions, one could safely assume that there’s almost a sort of anti-sorcery element mingled into the plotline too, a fear of pagan and neopagan lifestyles, a fear perhaps of older human civilizations and polytheistic practices, or perhaps a mistrust of them.

Color Out of Space (2019) is tasteless, it is too mundane, and it’s got too much of modern-day shabbiness—the modern costumes, the modern setting, the poorly-written characters, the contemporary way characters speak, the silliness, the unbalanced events, the vapid romantic and familial interactions, the contemporary special effects—which causes most of the movie feel ashen.

The movie focuses too much on the flaws of one family without saying enough about the flaws of the modern scientific communities, current law enforcement, and today’s medical communities. This motion picture wants to focus on the decay of a vaguely progressive White-seeming family amidst the farmland, wilderness, isolation, and vastness, while it also creates an atmosphere of claustrophobia or cabin fever. A fear of regression—of how, if human society returns to the rural outdoors, it will lose modern protections and degenerate—is maintained throughout the scenes. It is indicating possible anxieties, worries, and dangers around farm life.

The main family of the movie lives reasonably secluded, rustic yet they seem financially upper middle class, definitely privileged, vaguely Left-leaning in some respects, and most of its members are still somewhat connected to modernity despite their remoteness from typical modern American life. Collectively, the family characters of the movie display a back and forth between the future and the past, and a to-and-fro between conservatism and progressivism, and they seem more alternative than modern. The father and the daughter of this picture display habits and actions that point to tradition and to the past more than to the present, but their attitudes and practices appear slightly more counterculture than actually stereotypically modern, yet none of them strikingly appears truly out of place in today’s world. The father’s innovative mind and focus on the alpacas and the farm; the daughter’s neo-paganism and practice of witchcraft; and even the oldest son’s stoner habits and closeness with some hippie squatter: all of these things, while a little unorthodox, could fit within today’s society and seem completely normal by the standards of today’s mainstream. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that, on the surface, there are many different aspects about the farm, the alpacas, the core characters, the squatter, and the otherworldly color that might appear out of place or incongruous; altogether, when examined alongside the fact that the invading foreign entity infects and consumes the squatter, the family, and the animals, and the property, the incongruousness of each character and detail can be seen as a part of a signal or symbol of the cyclical patterns and risks and fears associated with imperialism, globalism, and immigration. Fear of the unlike. Danger and susceptibility where there is difference. The family from the movie are cosmically different from the central family in Lovecraft’s "The Colour out of Space.” Those flat changes the movie holds are unwarranted elements that confuse and undermine any sense of philosophical direction, any sense of art, and any sense of poetry or symbolism.

Lovecraft’s short story showed various different faults and mysteries that might affect the scientific community and the rustic community. Lovecraft’s story even hinted that an alien infection could someday spread, possibly dooming the whole world. This flick does hint at those things, but in a weaker and distracted fashion, and yet it is my belief that it does so almost in a sneering attitude mostly toward anyone who wants to live on a farm or in the wilderness with their nuclear family. Color Out of Space appears to be attempting to be a deconstruction piece against the nuclear family, a concept that really wasn’t all that present in the Lovecraft story.

When creating a work of cosmic horror or weird fiction, it is often vital to blend escapism and realism. Present-day casual commonplace situations in a film usually do not interest me. I would have liked the adaptation more if it were set in the 1930s or some time near then.

Color Out of Space is one of those movies I might inattentively rewatch in the future if I am bored or with a friend or something. Maybe my opinion on that will fluctuate. I feel as though I mainly have been rewatching this movie only to see Nicolas Cage’s acting and the grotesque creatures. I have watched this movie many times, and I have found moments of enjoyment and magic, but I’m enjoying the movie less every time I rewatch it. Presently I do not admire this movie, but there are amusing moments or scenes I would not mind seeing again. Nicolas Cage is a phenomenal actor, and I recommend you watch his clever performance in this movie.

It does feel like Nicolas Cage was delivering a good performance in a bad movie—a movie that, in my opinion, comes across as if it were spoiled by a dearth of creativity, by politics, or by corporate agendas. Color Out of Space appears just ambiguous enough to enable viewers to form many diverse interpretations, but the movie has too many distracting flaws and mediocre scenes.

While there are comical instances (especially ones with Nicolas Cage’s character) that I like, I’m not sure if they should be in the movie. For experiencing great art, I prefer more serious films. There are many comedies that I respect or adore (e.g., Shrek), but I require and judge comedies differently than I do other genres. Comedy for me is generally about escapism or respite, both of which are still important. Comedy aspects don’t harmonize well with cosmic horror traits.

Conclusion

Watch Richard Stanley Color Out of Space and read Lovecraft’s "The Colour out of Space" if you want to learn about cosmic horror and weird fiction. There are ways to have relevant, intellectual, and meaningful debates and dialogues about stories and movies like those two. When it comes to Lovecraft’s works, or anything based on his writings, sometimes it can be better to just take the good with the bad. I do not wholeheartedly recommend the 2019 Color Out of Space, but it is fine if you want to watch it. Someone might not want to read Lovecraft’s "The Colour out of Space,” and that is fine. I understand that human life is too short to keep wasting time on poor adaptations. I do not want snobbery to stop anyone from communicating truthfully or emotionally about those kinds of works. Whether you want to read the story or whether you want to watch the movie, that’s fine. Do what you think is good and well.

I personally believe that Lovecraft’s repulsive racism and odious politics did tend to bleed into his works, but there are writings of his that can still be enjoyed. You decide what you can stomach. There may be some who do not want to experience a piece of art if they think the artist was somehow against them or their beliefs. When judging art, one must endeavor to disaffiliate art from artists. Sometimes one can grow from criticism or from contemplating an idea from someone with whom one doesn’t agree.

All that I have tried to accomplish throughout this article is to write artistically and to initiate discussions that allow people to expand their ideas about art. All that I have written in this article is only based on my humble opinions and my love for the art of storytelling. Everything that I have written in this review is written with a desire for gemütlichkeit.

Matthew Pungitore’s short story “Wychyrst Tower” appeared in Cirsova Magazine (Winter 2021).

He has written various articles for the DMR Books blog. In the past, he has done volunteer work for the Hingham Historical Society. Matthew is the author of The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers and other stories, Fiendilkfjeld Castle, and Midnight's Eternal Prisoner: Waiting For The Summer. Matthew graduated with a Bachelor of Science in English from Fitchburg State University.

If you’re curious, visit his BookBaby author-page.

Contact him at: matthewpungitore_writer@outlook.com