Die Farbe (2010)

Direct adaptations of HP Lovecraft stories are few and for the most part, terrible. Both Dunwich Horror movies are pretty shitty retellings, The Haunted Palace with Vincent Price is a very loose and not very faithful retelling of "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". The Resurrected is a little more faithful (and not halfway bad) retelling of the Charles Ward story. The one true straight and faithful adaptation is "The Call of Cthulhu" which is a black and white, silent, 20s style film.

Now we come to Die Farbe, a German adaptation of "The Colour Out of Space". This movie is also in black and white (except for when we see "the color" which shows up as an iridescent purple). The story of the farmer having his crops and well go to shit after some strange thing lands outside of his farm and begins to infect everything is told within the context of an added element of a young American fellow trying to find his father in Germany.

Die Farbe, for being not a big budget film, is incredibly well-shot, well framed, and there are some beautiful landscape shots. The actors aren't amazing, but they do a pretty decent job and the story moves along nicely. There are some effects towards the end which don't look cheap or stupid at all. My one significant gripe with this movie is "the color" itself. It just doesn't feel menacing or terrifying in any way. The globule effect of the color looks a little hoakey but other than that, everything works pretty well.

This movie is definitely worth a watch for any Lovecraft fans. I'm very much looking forward to the director's next effort, which is a rather ambitious adaptation of "The Dreamlands". Check out this trailer if you're interested.