by Samantha Shuma
When we think of aliens, we may think of creatures from Star Wars or Alien. They typically have a humanoid or animalistic shape with weird, often slimy features. Although they look like something out of this world, they are easily comprehensible to the human mind. We do notably understand their reason for being, but we see them as a threat and do anything we can to destroy them. What if, like the concept of infinity, aliens were something completely incomprehensible to the human mind? You go insane from the amount of stress your brain is experiencing from just looking at it. Color Out of Space (Richard Stanley, 2019) takes aliens into this realm, and lets audiences watch a family go insane as they become surrounded by the Color (the alien of the film). It corrupts the minds of the family, making them hear, see and act differently. While they suffer mentally, their surroundings are affected as well. The Color absorbs into everything it touches, affecting plants, water, air, animal, and time throughout the film. The combination of physical and mental changes the family and their reality undergo is intense, and it is this combination that makes the family’s minds surrender to the Color.
The rest of this analysis will contain spoilers for The Color Out of Space. This film is a horror movie, which may contain some material of blood and gore. Reader discretion is advised.
The rest of this analysis will contain spoilers for The Color Out of Space. This film is a horror movie, which may contain some material of blood and gore. Reader discretion is advised.
The Color travels to Earth via a meteorite, crash landing in the Gardener family’s front yard. The meteorite glows a bright magenta, which is a color that can only be seen by the human eye. It’s a color that doesn’t actually exist, it’s our brain’s way of interpreting certain types of light (when you mix red and violet light, your eyes should see green, but the brain interprets it differently as a way brings the ends of the visible spectrum together) (Helmenstine, 2019). We don’t actually SEE magenta, our brains create it. So to literally see magenta would be incredibly taxing for the human mind to comprehend. Our minds would be affected differently, which is explored in film. The Gardener’s face some severe mental trauma from merely looking at it. The youngest child, Jack, falls victim first, believing he is talking with the Color, and that the well (the place the Color mostly resides) is his best friend. A little later in the film, The rest of the family, Nathan (husband), Theresa (wife),Lavinia (daughter), and Benny (older son), seem to go insane. Each character is affected by the color differently. Their downfall based around their initial mental problems. For example, Nathan is constantly worried of becoming his father, who was abusive to him growing up. The Color works that towards its favor, as Nathan becomes abusive towards his family, making sure his children don’t leave the house. Levinia believes in witchcraft, she hurts herself to perform rituals and believes the Color is her rituals being fulfilled. Since the battle against the Color is mainly a mental one, it exaggerates the mental weakness of the creatures it possesses to subdue them. By the end, the whole family has lost their sense of reality and becomes husks of their former selves, existing on a plane of existence different from anything we have imagined.
The family is basically doomed from the start, as the mental battle against the Color is already impossible to overcome. Their resulting mental state makes it impossible to be rational, but their minds aren’t the only thing affected by the Color. The environment surrounding the home along with the family’s physical bodies are heavily affected as well. The physical transformation everything goes through makes the Color not only a threat to the family, but to the whole planet. The meteorite the Color travels from is not made of any kind of rock we would recognize. It’s made out of some plastic material that dissolves over time. As the meteorite dissolves into the ground, the Color fuses into the surrounding land. This affects the growing of plants, which affects the animals. There are alpacas, a horse and a dog on the property. The horse and the dog become hostile and run away. The alpacas have a worse fate, from rooted grass and drinking the Color filled water, they get very sick. They lose their form as their bodies melt, eventually creating a slimy pile of unrecognizable flesh and bone. When Nathan goes to check on the alpacas, their form does not immediately bother him. It isn’t until their screaming makes him angry that he puts them out of their misery. If anyone in their right mind saw them, they would have ran, but Nathan didn’t seem to care. The fact that the family’s mind is being taxed so heavily by the Color makes it impossible for them to act rationally to run away or defend themselves.
The video below has content that may disturb some readers, discretion is advised.
The family is basically doomed from the start, as the mental battle against the Color is already impossible to overcome. Their resulting mental state makes it impossible to be rational, but their minds aren’t the only thing affected by the Color. The environment surrounding the home along with the family’s physical bodies are heavily affected as well. The physical transformation everything goes through makes the Color not only a threat to the family, but to the whole planet. The meteorite the Color travels from is not made of any kind of rock we would recognize. It’s made out of some plastic material that dissolves over time. As the meteorite dissolves into the ground, the Color fuses into the surrounding land. This affects the growing of plants, which affects the animals. There are alpacas, a horse and a dog on the property. The horse and the dog become hostile and run away. The alpacas have a worse fate, from rooted grass and drinking the Color filled water, they get very sick. They lose their form as their bodies melt, eventually creating a slimy pile of unrecognizable flesh and bone. When Nathan goes to check on the alpacas, their form does not immediately bother him. It isn’t until their screaming makes him angry that he puts them out of their misery. If anyone in their right mind saw them, they would have ran, but Nathan didn’t seem to care. The fact that the family’s mind is being taxed so heavily by the Color makes it impossible for them to act rationally to run away or defend themselves.
The video below has content that may disturb some readers, discretion is advised.
The fact that the Color is incomprehensible makes it uncontrollable by anything on Earth. Since the Gardeners cannot process the Color fully, they have no means to fight against. Going back to the example of a Zenomorph from Alien, we can tell just by looking at it that it is dangerous. Its sharp claws and teeth make it anybody’s worst nightmare. Since we can look at it and understand it, we can find the Zenomorph’s weakness and ultimately kill it (as it is killed at the end of almost every Alien movie). Think back to the Color, it’s only physical representation is a misty gas of a color that doesn’t exist. The family never realizes there is something exterrestrial in their mists, the Color is never seen as a friend or a threat, making it impossible for the family to fight against.
A typical alien movie would have a crew on a spaceship fighting a slimy, flesh eating monster, but the Color is something much scarier than that. Although we the audience can see it, it is an unknown killer to the Gardeners. We see how it makes them hurt themselves and act aggressively towards each other, but they never realize what is happening themselves. Even when they do try to leave, they forget that they were trying to leave and mindlessly go off to do something else. Their minds wither away as the Color seeps into their air, water and plants. The Color isn’t something the anyone’s mind can really process. We do not know how to react when we cannot discern something as good or evil. As the film shows, we wouldn’t react at all. The family goes around like everything is okay, even as Nathan sits in an empty room talking to herself or Benny going down the well to save the dog (which isn’t down there).Their minds change as their environment changes, making the whole reality in around the home slowly change as the Color becomes more powerful. Everything, body, mind and environment, all changing at once helps the family adjust into insanity, making it easy for the Color to control them, shape them and kill them.
Work Cited:
Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D. Why Magenta Is Not a Color of the Spectrum. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/what-is-the-wavelength-of-magenta-606166.
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