Latest / Weeknight Mysteries Podcast / Ep. 116 | Color Out of Space - Lovecraft & The Horrifying Tale of the Apartment tha

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Ep. 116 | Color Out of Space - Lovecraft & The Horrifying Tale of the Apartment tha · 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
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I said, I'd love to see someone do an analysis
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: of the color in this movie and exactly what the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: meaning of each color is. Even without deciphering everything going on,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: it's just beautiful to look at. It almost all takes
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: place in the middle of this forest. It's the family
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: who live deep within this woodland. And so every background
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: is just this sea of green. At the beginning of
• 4:00
  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
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: of purple weaved fruit things. The idea of like a
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: purple spiral, it always seems to represent something more natural.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: For example, the purple unnatural hair dye in Levine's hair,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: sort of spiraling through her hair. And then when they
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: go to where Tommy Chong's character, they go towards his house,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and he's got these ribbons wrapped around the trees, in
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: spiral shapes in the same purple color. Oh, it seems
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: to sort of try and get this idea in your
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: head from the start that this purple magenta color is
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: a kind of unnatural source among the greenery and natural
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: colors of the woodland. Kind of an obvious signal, but
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: it's a nice little bit of foreshadowing. So basically, the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: basic plot of the story. And I'm going to try
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: not to give too many strong spoilers here, but there
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: will be some mild ones. A meteorite lands in Nicolas
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Cage's front garden. And then within the meteorite is the
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: color from outer space. And I think when Lovecraft was
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: originally writing the story, he wanted to convey an alien
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: presence that was so incomprehensible to human minds, that the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: only way they had to describe it was of being
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: a color. So in the original story, He describes it
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: as a color which they've never seen before. It's like
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: an unimaginable color. It's something that doesn't exist in our
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: human world. It's a color that shouldn't exist in nature. Obviously,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: you can't just invent a new color, so they've used
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: this magenta color. But I was actually looking on at IMDB,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: and they've got some interesting trivia about the use of
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the color. They use magenta because it's a color that
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: doesn't exist from a single wavelength of light as part
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: of the color spectrum of visible light. I don't really
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: understand what that means to be honest. It's an extra
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: spectral color that is only perceived by humans in a
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: specific interaction of the optical rods. So anyway, there's an
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: interesting explanation of why they use magenta, but obviously it's
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: a decent replacement for the indescribable color of the original story.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: It looks absolutely stunning in the archive. You've got this
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: idea of this magenta color slowly starting to invade the
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: lush greenery of their surroundings. First it starts out, the
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: little flowers start sprouting, and then you see the tendrils
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: wrapping around a tree, mirroring the coloring in the daughter's
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: hair and the ribbons and the trees. You just get
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: this really interesting sense. This is where they capture the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Lovecraftian element the best. There's this slowly creeping into their lives,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: this magenta color slowly infecting the world around them, and
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: as it begins to infect the world around them, it
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: starts to affect their mental state. It's done really effectively.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I would say for the first two-thirds of the movie,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: this sort of slow creeping in of this color, this
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: alien color, and the beautiful at the beginning of the movie.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: And also there's a lot of things where they use
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: color to signal danger, like where she cracks the egg
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: and has blood in the egg, and the Delizards with
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the bright colors on them indicate that they might be
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: poisonous or dangerous. You know, always using these colors to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: signal some kind of present danger or illness or something
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: that is out of place or unnatural. It's also really
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: obvious that they are absolutely passionate about Lovecraft. There's so
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: many little references in there, and probably loads that completely
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: went over my head. I'm not like a huge Lovecraft fan,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: but you know, there's all these like references to things
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: within the Lovecraft universe, and also how it would be
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: in a modern world. So I really like that the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: daughter has the cheap paperback Necronomicon that she's reading, and
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: it is the kind of thing that if this book
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: existed in the real world, this is kind of the
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: format that you would expect to get it in in
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: the modern world. Beautiful film. I really love the atmosphere
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of this creeping, invading. It feels really
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: menacing and you don't really know what's going on, and
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: the way it starts to affect the mentality of the family.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I think towards the end, it starts to fall apart
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: slightly though. It gets to a point where it starts
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: to get a bit too crazy. In the original story,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: the way they color out a space ultimately affects people,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: and how it affects like livestock is it kind of
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: starts to make them disintegrate. It kind of starts to
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: change things in really subtle ways. like they describe how
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: they keep finding animals, and they can't really tell what's
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: wrong with them, but they've, you know, they find them,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: it's like a woodchuck or something like that, and it's
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: been transformed in some way, they can't really tell how
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: it just looks unnatural to them, and they see like
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: a hare leaping across the road or a rabbit, and it's,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: it's dried as a bit too long to be normal.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: It's just something, when they say it, they can't describe it,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: it's just something unnatural and uncanny about their creatures the
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: way they've been mutated, The movie doesn't go that subtle,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: let me just say, without getting any spoilers, it's very
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: own subtle in its conveying of the horror. This is
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: sort of the, some of the parts one don't like
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: that much about the film. It starts to take on
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: a bit of like a body horror vibe, which would
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: be fine, and it's fine to just for them to
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: stray a bit from the source material, but they rely
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: way too much on computer generated effects to achieve these
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: body horror scenes. and as good as it is, I'm
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: not being down on the people who did these CG effects,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: it just never looks right. You can always just tell
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: it's not really there, even if they had a slightly
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: cheaper looking practical effect, I just think it would look
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: so much better, it looks so much more realistic, and
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: it's a shame they didn't go with that, I think
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: it starts to slightly fall apart at that point for
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: me the movie, so I'm going to go for some
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: of the things I didn't like in the film. The
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: characters are all kind of a bit stereotypical, You've got
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: an English Cage playing Nicolas Cage, you've got Tommy Chong
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: playing Tommy Chong, you've got the stoner teenagey brother, you've
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: got the wife who's down of cancer, and you've got
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the small child who basically acts as the creepy kid,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: similar to the one in Poltergeist who goes there, he
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: basically plays that role, and then you've got the the
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: wife cracking snarky teenager. This role seems to be in
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: every movie these days. I don't know why they always
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: have to insert this sort of character. It's basically the
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: snarky teenager girl character, who always has a one line
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: of every scene, I call it the live Houston character,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: yeah they did this with the It movies, they always
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: have to have like witty one line as whenever something
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: scary happens and it kind of ended up sort of
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: reducing the horror factor of a lot of scenes, and
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: although it's not too bad in this movie, there is
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: a bit of that. there's a bit of a luller
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: and a comedy, I don't know what the obsession of
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: alpacas is, they always have alpacas in there because it's
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know if it's some reference
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: that goes over my head, but it's a bit sort
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: of oh look at us how random we are, we've
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: got alpacas, I don't know, it's good to have a
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: bit of light relief, but I don't know if in
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: this film sometimes it felt a bit out of place,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: so yeah I was going to go saying about the
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: characters in the film, I didn't like him too much
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: because they all felt a bit typical. but you can
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: tell what this movie they're trying to do. Something very
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: different with a horror movie and a lot of the
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: characters felt very tropey, if you know what I mean,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: they felt very like, you'd seen him in every other
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: horror movie, and I kind of wish they'd done something
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: slightly different with the characters as well as the movie itself,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the final act of the movie it all feels a
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: bit muddled, the problem is the beginning of the film
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: builds up so well this horror, and it also ends
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: in a crescendo, and it all feels a bit sort of,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: they're just, Throwing a load of things at your load
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: of elements, and whereas I think if they went a
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: bit more slow a bit more slow paced and subtle
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: with the horrors, it would be more effective, for example,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I think there's some genuinely creepy moments, for example, when
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: there's something that happens to the mother and the younger son,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: when it first reveals what happens to them, it's pretty horrific,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: you feel like, oh my god that's horrible, and the
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: reactions of the family are really good, and you kind
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: of feel that horror along with them, and then they
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: just kind of, they don't know much else with it,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: they don't explore the horror of that situation enough, and
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I think they could have explored this idea a little
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: bit more what they do with the mother and the
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: younger son is pretty horrific, and I think they could
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: have sort of explored the family's reaction to that a
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: little bit more than they do, like just go a
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: little bit further with it, and there's another really good
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: moment where they go back to Tommy Jong's house, and
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: there's just this sound from outside, just the sound design
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: at this moment in the film is really good, It
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: has a really sinister effect, I think, it shows real
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: moments of horror, but it's kind of interspersed at this
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: point with a lot of very noisy scenes, a lot
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: of very bright flashing colors that are slightly disorientated, and
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I think it kind of takes away from the horror
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: in certain scenes. It gets a bit kind of a
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: bit over the top, I'm not being too down on
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: the movie, I just think towards the end it could
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: have been torn down a little bit, I understand what
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: they're doing with the colors. but it gets so bright
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and psychedelic that it actually becomes quite difficult to watch,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: it's like I was getting a headache at some point,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: I remember there was a scene where there was like
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: this a blue flashing light from a police car, and
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: it was interspersed with this bright magenta color, and it
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: was flashing across people's faces, and it was just like
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I was getting a headache. From watching it, it was
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: so disorientating, and you know it's interesting visually, but it's
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: not horrific, it's not a scary scene, it kind of
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: like that they tried to do something slightly different with
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the what the color does to people and what it
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: does to the animals, but I think if they were
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: going to go with CG effects, I think if they
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: stuck with what it says in the book, it would
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: have been more interesting like in the book, everything sort
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: of turns gray and starts to like disintegrate as if
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: it sort of turned into ash. And I think they
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: could have done that quite well with computer generated effects.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: But I think what they went with it all looked
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: a bit cartoony, a bit slightly silly, a lot of
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: the CG kind of took me out of the atmosphere
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: of the movie at that point, but there were things
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: that they changed from the original story that I had
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: to like, I think in the Lovecraft's original short story,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: in the final scene, he introduced like a whole bunch
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: of characters that haven't been introduced in the rest of
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the story, like the big climax of the story involves
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people that you don't, apart from them
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: the writer, you don't really know any of the other characters,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: I think they do a better job, it sort of
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: combines two different parts of the original story to make
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the end of the movie, which they do that I
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: think in a better way, all in all I'd enjoyed
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: the movie, I don't want to sound like I'm being
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: down on it, I'm trying to list the things that
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't like. But I really like that there's a
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: modern horror movie that they've tried to do something different with,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: I see so many. Trailers for horror movies coming out
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: and it just looks like every other horror movie I've
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: seen for the last 10 years or so, you can
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: tell immediately like beat for beat, everything that's going to
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: happen in that movie, just from watching a trailer and
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: it's just refreshing to see him finally do something a
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: bit different, the visuals and everything with the movie, it's
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: completely unique, the only thing I can compare it to
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: really is Annihilation. And I think Annihilation is quite inspired
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: by the Color Out of Space, I think maybe Annihilation
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: does an even better job of being Lovecraftian than the
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Color Out of Space does, Annihilation kind of to me
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: is like a mashup of Lovecraft and JG.