Color Out of Space.
So, you know , when it says ‘based on a short story’ , and the movie lasts nearly two hours, you can begin to infer some licence has been taken.
What’s there from the original?
The meteor.
The well.
The attic.
What’s new? The sense of urgency. It takes two long, slow, creeping years of decay in the original work. The dramatisation of the family does not. . The cute young woman. The mother with the courageous background. The Stephen-king-ish sense of things falling apart. This movie is about a family, not about the happening. The heart strings are sought for but missed. They throw in clumsy homage to The Thing, which is totally off-piste.
It is beautiful. Color Out of Space played out like a prequel to Annihilation for a good solid middle section.
The characters are complex but cariactures of themselves.
It is interminably slow.
Is it a good adaptation? It will do. Is it a good movie? It will do. Eventually, of course, in its own sweet bloody time. But it will do.
Just.