Latest / Weeknight Mysteries Podcast / Ep. 118 | Color Out of Space - Lovecraft & Virtual Black Mirror - Guided Scrying

Transcript

Ep. 118 | Color Out of Space - Lovecraft & Virtual Black Mirror - Guided Scrying · Weeknight Mysteries Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: If anyone followed me on my gaming channel, they might
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: have seen that I was playing the game Call of Cthulhu.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I kind of gave up on it, I probably will
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: return to it at some point, but the thing that
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: made me stop playing it was that I started to
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: reread Lovecraft. And it kind of made me realize how
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: unlovedcraftian the game was. I think this is a problem
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: that plays a lot of Lovecraft adaptations, whether it's movies
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: or video games. You can insert as much Lovecraftian lore
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: as you want, but in my opinion this doesn't make
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: it a Lovecraftian horror. I think there's something in Lovecraft
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: writing that is extremely hard to get across in a
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: visual medium. I think maybe that's why it's so hard
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: for people to adapt his works. There's something unseeable or
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: unexplainable in his writings, which is very hard to convey
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: when you're showing the thing visually on the screen. So
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: when I started hearing reviews of The Color Outer Space,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I got pretty excited. As people were saying it was
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: one of the most faithful adaptations, it was finally Lovecraft
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: done right, and so I was quite excited to see it.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: It also stars Nicolas Cage, who is kind of a
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: lovey-more-hate-him kind of actor, but I've got to say I
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: do quite enjoy his films, including The Wicca Man. So
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I thought I would give it a go and see
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: what the fuss was all about. Is it as faithful
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: as people say? So I've got to say the first
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: impression of this film and the most striking thing about
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: it is the visuals. Every scene is just absolutely stunning
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: to look at. It's a film about color as the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: title might imply, but they've just really gone to town
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: on the color aspect of this story. It's a film
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: that tells its story with color, I think. It seems
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: like the color is the most important thing on the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: screen at all times. Everything looks like they've boosted up
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: the saturation to maximum. not in a way that looks
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: wholly unnatural. It just gives everything this gorgeous lush look
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: to it. It's quite an interesting choice for a horror adaptation,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: especially with Lovecraft. I know whenever I read the stories
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: in my head, they're always very dark, gloomy type of stories,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: and that's the kind of imagery I have in my head.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Generally horror films are not all that colorful. The colors
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: in it remind me almost of the original Suspiria movie.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: These bright, clashing colors that flash in and out on
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the screen. There's something really important about the color coding
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: in the movie, and I'd love to see someone go
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: through it, scene by scene and decode every use of
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: color in the film, because as well as the alien color,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: there's just so much more going on. I've noticed that
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: almost every indoor scene, they seem to be using blue
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: and this orangey-brown color contrasted against each other. Then on
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the outdoor scenes you've got these greens and purples contrasting,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and then each character seems to have their own color coding.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: For example, the mother character always seems to be wearing
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: some sort of white outfits. The daughter's always wearing black.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: The ward character who plays the narrator in the original story,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: he's always seems to be wearing blue. Nicolas Gage is
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: often seen wearing this red check color, which I think
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: might be a reference to the original story. There is
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: a certain fate that meets his equivalent character in the story,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and towards the end the red checked cloth plays some
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: sort of role. So it's probably just a nod towards
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: the original story, but yeah, I think there's something really
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: important with the color, even more than obvious, and like
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: I said, I'd love to see someone do an analysis
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: of the color in this movie, and exactly what the
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: meaning of each color is. Even without deciphering everything going on,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: it's just beautiful to look at. It almost all takes
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: place in the middle of this forest. It's the family
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: who live deep within this woodland. And so every background
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: is just this sea of green. At the beginning of
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: the movie, everything just starts out just beautiful green in
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the background. And then you get these sort of traces
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: of purple weaved fruit things. The idea of like a
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: purple spiral, it always seems to represent something unnatural. For example,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the purple unnatural hair dye in Levine's hair, sort of
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: spiraling through her hair. And then when they go to
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: where Tommy Chong's character, they go towards his house, and
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: he's got these ribbons wrapped around the trees in spiral
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: shapes in the same purple color. Oh, it seems to
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: sort of try and get this idea in your head
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: from the start that this purple magenta color is a
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: kind of unnatural source among the greenery and natural colors
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of the woodland. Kind of an obvious signal, but it's
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: a nice little bit of foreshadowing. So basically, the basic
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: plot of the story. And I'm going to try not
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: to give too many strong spoilers here, but there will
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: be some mild ones. A meteorite lands in Nicolas Cage's
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: front garden. And then within the meteorite is the color
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: from outer space. And I think when Lovecraft was originally
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: writing the story, he wanted to convey an alien presence
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: that was so incomprehensible to human minds, that the only
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: way they had to describe it was of being a color.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: So in the original story, He describes it as a
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: color which they've never seen before. It's like an unimaginable color.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: It's something that doesn't exist in our human world. It's
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: a color that shouldn't exist in nature. Obviously, you can't
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: just invent a new color. So they've used this like
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: magenta color, but I was actually looking on an IMDB
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: and they've got some interesting trivia about the use of
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the color. They use magenta because it's a color that
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't exist from a single wavelength of lights as part
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: of the color spectrum. I don't really understand what that
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: means to be honest. It's an extra spectral color that
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: is only perceived by humans in a specific interaction of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: the optical rods. So anyway, there's an interesting explanation of
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: why they use magenta, but obviously it's a decent replacement
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: for the indescribable color of the original story. And it
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: looks absolutely stunning in the archive. You've got this kind
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: of idea of this magenta color slowly starting to invade
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the lush greenery of their surroundings. And first it starts out,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: you know, the little flowers start sprouting. And then you
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: see like the tendrils wrapping around a tree, mirroring the
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: coloring in the daughter's hair and the ribbons and the trees.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: You just get this really interesting sense. This is where
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: they capture the Lovecraftian element the best. There's this slowly
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: creeping into their lives. This magenta color slowly infecting the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: world around them. And as it begins to infect the
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: world around them, it starts to affect their mental state.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: And it's done really effectively. I would say for the
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: first two thirds of the movie, this sort of slow
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: creeping in of this color, this alien color. And beautiful
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of the movie. And also there's a
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: lot of things where they use color to signal danger
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: like where she cracks the egg and has blood in
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: the egg. And the delizards with the bright colors on
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: them to indicate that they might be poisonous or dangerous.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: You know, always using these colors to signal some kind
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: of present danger or illness or something that is out
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: of place or unnatural. It's also really obvious that they
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: are absolutely passionate about Lovecraft. There's so many little references
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: in there and probably loads that completely went over my head.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not like a huge Lovecraft fan, but you know,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: There's all these like references to things within the Lovecraft universe.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: And also how it would be in a modern world.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: So I really like the daughter has the cheap paperback
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Necronomicon that she's reading. And it is the kind of
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: thing that if this book existed in the real world,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: this is kind of the format that you would expect
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: to get it in the modern world. Beautiful film. I
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: really love their atmosphere at the beginning of this creeping, invading.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: It feels really menacing and you don't really know what's
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: going on. And the way it starts to affect the
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: mentality of the family. I think towards the end it
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: starts to fall apart slightly though. It gets to a
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: point where it starts to get a bit too crazy.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: In the original story, the way the color out of
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: space ultimately affects people and how it affects like livestock
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: is it kind of starts to make them disintegrate. It
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: kind of starts to change things in really subtle ways
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: like they describe how they keep finding animals and they
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: can't really tell what's wrong with them, but they've you
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: know they find them it's like a woodchuck or something
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: like that. And it's been transformed in some way they
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: can't really tell how it just looks unnatural to them
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: and they see like a hare leaping across the road
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: or a rabbit and it's its stride is a bit
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: too long to be normal. It's just something when they
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: see it they can't describe it it's just something unnatural
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: and uncanny about the creatures the way they've been mutated.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: The movie doesn't go that subtle. Let me just say
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: without getting any spoilers it's very unswaddled in its conveying
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: of the horror. This is sort of the sum of
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the parts one don't like that much about the film.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: It starts to take on a bit of like a
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: body horror vibe which would be fine and it's fine
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: for them to stray a bit from the source material
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: but they rely way too much on computer generated effects
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: to achieve these body horror scenes and as good as
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: it is I'm not being down on the people who
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: did these CG effects it just never looks right. You
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: can always just tell it's not really there even if
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: they had a slightly cheaper looking practical effect. I just
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: think it would look so much better it looks so
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: much more realistic and it's a shame I didn't go
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: with that I think it starts to slightly fall apart
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: at that point for me the movie so I'm going
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: to go for some of the things I didn't like
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: in the film. The characters are all kind of a
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: bit stereotypical. You've got an English cage playing Nicholas Cage.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: You've got Tommy Chong playing Tommy Chong. You've got the
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: stoner teenagey brother. You've got the wife who's down of
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: cancer and you've got the small child who basically acts
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: as the creepy kid similar to the one in Poltergeist
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: who goes there. He basically plays that role and then
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you've got the the wife cracking snarky teenager. This role
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: seems to be in every movie these days I don't
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: know why they always have to insert this sort of character.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: It's basically the snarky teenager girl character who always has
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: a one line of every scene. I call it the
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: live Houston character. They did this with the IT movies.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: They always had to have like witty one line as
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: whenever something scary happens and it kind of ended up
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: sort of reducing the horror factor of a lot of
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: scenes and although it's not too bad in this movie
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: there is a bit of that. There's a bit of
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: a lol random comedy. I don't know what the obsession
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: of alpacas is. They always have alpacas in there because
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: it's I don't know. I don't know if it's some
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: reference that goes over my head but it's a bit
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: sort of oh look at us how random we are.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: we've got alpacas i don't know it's good to have
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: a bit of light relief but i don't know if
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: in this film sometimes it felt a bit out of
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: place so yeah i was going to say about the
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: characters in the film i didn't like him too much
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: because they all felt a bit typical You can tell
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: with this movie they're trying to do something very different
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: with a horror movie and a lot of the characters
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: felt very tropey if you know what I mean they
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: felt very like you'd seen him in every other horror
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: movie and I kind of wish they'd done something slightly
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: different with the characters as well as the movie itself.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: The final act of the movie it all feels a
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: bit muddled. The problem is the beginning of the film
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: builds up so well this horror and it all sort
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: of ends in a crescendo and it all feels a
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: bit sort of they're just throwing a load of things
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: at your load of elements and whereas I think if
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: they went a bit more slow a bit more slow
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: paced and subtle with the horrors it would be more effective.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: For example I think there's some genuinely creepy moments for
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: example when there's something that happens to the mother and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the youngest son. When it first reveals what happened to
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: them it's pretty horrific. You feel like oh my god
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: that's horrible and the reactions of the family are really
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: good and you kind of feel that horror along with
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: them and then they just kind of they don't know
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: much else with it. They don't explore the horror of
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: that situation enough and I think they could have explored
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: this idea a little bit more what they what they
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: do with the mother and the youngest son is pretty
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: horrific and I think they could have sort of explored
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: the family's reaction to that a little bit more than
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: they do like you'll spoil a little bit further with it.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: There's another really good moment where they go back to
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Tommy John's house and there's just this sound from outside
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: just the sound design at this moment and the film
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: is really good it has a really sinister effect I
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: think it shows real moments of horror but it's kind
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of interspersed at this point with a lot of very
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: noisy scenes a lot of very bright flashing colors that
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: are slightly disorientating and I think it kind of takes
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: away from the horror and certain scenes it gets a
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: bit kind of a bit over the top. I'm not
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: being too down on the movie I just think towards
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the end it could have been torn down a little bit.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I understand what they're doing with the colors but it
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: gets so bright and psychedelic that it actually becomes quite
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: difficult to watch it's like I was getting a headache
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: at some point I remember there was a scene where
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: there was like this a blue flashing light from a
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: police car and it was interspersed with this bright magenta
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: color and it was flashing across people's faces and it
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: was just like I was getting a headache from watching
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: it it was so disorientating and you know it's interesting.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: visually but it's not horrific it's not a scary scene
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: i kind of like that they tried to do something
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: slightly different with the what the color does to people
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: and what it does to the animals but i think
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: if they were going to go with cg effects i
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: think if they stuck with what it says in the
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: book it would have been more interesting like in the
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: book everything sort of turns gray and starts to like
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: disintegrate as if it sort of turns ash and i
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: think they could have done that quite well with computer
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: generated effects but i think what they went with It
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: all looked a bit cartoony a bit slightly silly a
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: lot of the CG kind of took me out of
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere of the movie at that point but there
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: were things that they changed from the original story that
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I had to like I think in the Lovecraft's original
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: short story in the final scene he introduced like a
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of characters that haven't been introduced in the
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: rest of the story like the big climax of the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: story involves a bunch of people that you don't apart
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: from them the writer you don't. really know any of
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the other characters I think they do a better job
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: it sort of combines two different parts of the original
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: story to make the end of the movie which they
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: do that I think in a better way all and
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: all I enjoyed the movie I don't want to sound
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: like I'm being down on it I'm trying to list
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: the things that I didn't like but I really like
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: that there's a modern horror movie that they've tried to
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: do something different with I see so many trailers for
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: horror movies coming out and it just Looks like every
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: other horror movie I've seen for the last 10 years
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: or so you can tell immediately like beat for beat
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: everything that's going to happen in that movie just from
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: watching a trailer and it's just refreshing to see them
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: finally do something a bit different the visuals and everything
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: with the movie it's completely unique the only thing I
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: can compare it to really is Annihilation and I think
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Annihilation is quite inspired by the color. Out of Space
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I think maybe Annihilation doesn't. Even better job of being
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Lovecraftian than the color out of space does Annihilation kind
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: of to me is like a mashup of Lovecraft and JG.