The Colour out of Space-Review

Intro

This is going to be a somewhat biased review. I utterly adore The Colour out of Space; I think it is the best of Lovecraft's work for the reasons I hope to convince you in this review. Is it perfect? No! However, as an example of cosmic horror at its most eldritch and nightmarish, it most certainly is. The Colour is the perfect cosmic horror deity that should have been the genre mascot. The Colour out of Space scares me on a level few horror stories can achieve, and I would love to celebrate that. So let us get into the meat of this, and hopefully, I can explain why.

Writing

We should start with the negatives, namely the lack of characterization of the Gardener family and the POV. The problems are relatively simple. The Gardeners are non-entities, only given names and basic descriptions that suffer and die throughout the story. There is no apparent attempt by them to leave, protect their stay or understand what is happening. They more or less accept their self-destruction. It is difficult to feel sorry for them because Lovecraft did not bother to let me know them. A similar problem occurs with the narrating POV, in that it is told after the fact to and by people who were not present and told second-hand information. There is a missed opportunity here for organic tension building from the Gardener's perspective, which could have made an already horrific tale all the scarier. It should have been told from the Gardener's view, have them struggle against it before succumbing to the Colour. I think that would have created the perfect cosmic horror story.

Now that I have that done let's get onto the juicy positives.

The Colour is the perfect cosmic horror monster, maybe rivaled by Junji Ito's Spiral in Uzumaki; we barely know what it is, what it looks like, and even if it is sentient. These unanswered questions leave us on edge in a manner that other cosmic nightmares like Cthulu, Shub Niggurath, or The Shuggoths could only dream of. Lovecraft's brilliant inversion of Colour (metaphor and symbolic of life and vitality) into a horrid alien that steals life destroys nature, and rots everything is exceptionally potent. Despite the POV being disconnected from the main events, there is a palpable sense of dread in the imagery and the escalation.

We go from the decaying vegetation to the color stealing all life, the Gardener's prosperity. I will never forget the image of Ms. Gardener bleeding color in the attic is an image that I will never forget. Even Lovecraft's verbose prose works to build a haunting picture of life degrading, of something out worldly encroaching on reality. The Colour out of Space is Lovecraft at his most horrific to me personally.

Conclusion

The Colour out of Space is horrific, despite its flaws in characters and the POV not being involved in the events detracting us from the story. However, Lovecraft can weave a terrifying tale of entropy and cultural subversion. I believe that Junji Ito's Uzumaki is a spiral successor to The Colour out of Space due to similar themes and cultural subversion. While Uzumaki fixes some of the problems involved in The Colour out of Space, they are equal regarding visuals and atmosphere. Lovecraft creates a story of pure dread; the fates of the Gardeners are haunting and grotesque, and the less said about color, the better. Go and read this story now!

Acknowledgments

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