Colour from the Dark is Loosely Adapted Lovecraftian Horror
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Colour from the Dark wisely switches a mayhem-causing meteorite in the source material with a malevolent entity spawned by accident a little closer to home. Its actions seem to be a blessing… at first.
Written by James “Crypticpsych” Lasome
November 8, 2011
Movie Trailer
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Release: February 23, 2010 (US DVD)
Directed by: Ivan Zuccon
Written by: H.P. Lovecraft (story), Ivo Gazzarrini
Starring:
Debbie Rochon as Lucia
Michael Segal as Pietro
Marysia Kay as Alice
Gerry Shanahan as Giovanni
In 1943 Italy, Lucia (Debbie Rochon), her husband Pietro (Michael Segal), and her near-mute, shy sister Alice (Marysia Kay) are growing crops on their land while Pietro’s brothers are fighting in the war. One day, Pietro asks Alice to collect water from their well. While doing so, Alice inadvertently loses the bucket. Pietro, trying to retrieve it, seems to get the bucket caught in the depths but manages to pull it back up to the surface. Unbeknownst to him, though, his actions have freed a strange entity. As a result, a bizarre glow and color is now emanating from the depths of the well, changing everything it touches. Now the family’s crops are growing faster and bigger, to levels never seen before. Pietro’s debilitating knee injury that kept him from battle seems to be healing. Even Alice manages to speak for the first time! But, as the days after the breach go by, Lucia and the rest of the good, God-fearing family begin to show signs of being possessed by some unseen force and may realize that their farm’s sudden prosperity may not be as good for it or them as they once thought.
$100,000. That’s how much money IMDb claims is the estimated budget
of Colour from the Dark, a loose indie adaptation of H.P.
Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space”. If that’s true, then Ivan Zuccon
and his cast 
and crew should be applauded for
the creepy atmosphere and realism they found in a farm in Italy because
this film is a pretty amazing piece of work on that budget. In
addition, the acting from the three main characters is fantastic,
creating a believable and doomed family unit.
A physical location can add significantly to an indie shoot versus shooting on a set or a soundstage. Great movies have been made on sets, there’s no denying that, but there’s something organic about the idea that the actors you’re seeing are walking around in an actual, existing building. Zuccon had to have known this because Colour From the Dark feels so much bigger than its budget partially thanks to the farm where it takes place in the Italian countryside. It’s both realistic and makes sense as the home of the poverty-stricken farmer family the movie centers on. Thus, the simple, rustic architecture of the existing building is already dark and forboding before Zuccon adds fog during the night scenes when the “force” takes effect. A great Marco Werba soundtrack throughout Colour From the Dark only increases the professional feel of the final product.
Acting-wise, the three person family of Segal, Kay, and Rochon are
all great, each in their own way. Segal’s “Pietro” ably handles much of
the psychological torment of the story, having to show the impact of
dealing with the effects of the “force” on his crops, his family, and
his own 
sanity. Kay’s performance as
“Alice” makes caring about a character with no lines for much of the
film very easy, only to make us feel for her even more as she must deal
with changes in her sister and brother-in-law. But Rochon steals the
show, even if she doesn’t really do much of an Italian accent. She
absolutely nails a performance as “Lucia” that begins believably
motherly before starting a steady descent into possessed,
effectively-overacted madness and almost Succubus-like, single-minded
sexual desires. It’s getting harder and harder to pick out a “best”
Debbie Rochon performance because so many of them are so good. This one
is no exception, being made even better by the two believable, great
actors she’s working against.
Unfortunately, beyond the main three, Colour from the Dark hits a wall with its supporting cast, particularly the neighbors Giovanni and Anna (Gerry Shanahan and Eleanor James). Their characters and performances aren’t so much bad as pointless. As Lucia’s transformation gets bloodier and takes a welcome, decidedly blasphemous turn, cutting back to these two elsewhere derails the film slightly because they never seem that essential to the overall plot. In addition, the use of CGI to represent the “force” is a bit of a strange decision. At times it works, but at other times it feels a little out of place and almost makes one wonder if the film would’ve been better if there wasn’t a visible form of the “force” at all.
Overall Colour from the Dark stands as a very well-done, admittedly loose, Lovecraft adaptation. Showcasing a family’s atmospheric downward spiral into insanity, blasphemy, and possession masterfully, it’s a great example of a film made on the relative cheap that creates bigger scares than some movies with ten times the budget. It’s definitely worth taking the time to hunt this one down.
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