Color out of Space-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

PLOT SUMMARY: When a meteorite falls into the Gardeners' garden, the strange light that emits from it interferes with their life. 

If you ever want to watch a movie that will leave you with one eyebrow raised, mouth agape and your mind whirling, this is the one to watch.

Color Out of Space can easily be defined as one weird movie. Everything is all jumbled toward the second half and honestly, the ending will leave you flabbergasted.

COLOR OUT OF SPACE Movie Plot 

The movie is about a family, The Gardeners, who have taken their last names a little seriously and taken some sort of exile in a place untouched by the progress made in the twenty-first century.

However, the husband, Nathan, is the only one who is actually into it. You can see his wife, Theresa, his sons, Benny and Jack, and his daughter, Lavinia, being frustrated by the lack of proper technology.

In fact, Lavinia resorts to witchcraft to ask whoever is listening to take her away from here. In a way, she gets her wish.

The Gardeners have a horse that disappears after the first scene, a herd of Alpacas, and a dog. The Alpacas are not used for their fibre but for their milk. Nathan also has a small garden growing tomatoes and peaches. And instead of bottled water, he has his own well.

Theresa has apparently just recovered from surgery and is a stockbroker who keeps losing clients because of the bad internet connection.

Benny is into smoking weed and Jack is the usual, annoying, clingy kid.

Lavinia meets Ward, a hydrologist who has come into town to inspect the water.

He meets with the townsfolk and isn’t impressed with the water supply, advising everyone to stick to bottled water.

Things go crazy when something drops from the sky into The Gardners’ front yard. The meteorite emits a weird magenta light, electricity thing, that doesn’t do much at first.

Slowly, the “color” starts festering into the lives of the family in strange ways. Theresa is shown to go into a trance and cuts her fingers off along with the carrots. When Jack calls out to her, she smiles and says dinner is ready.

Apparently, Theresa thought that even in her confused state she had managed to cook dinner. In the next scene, she is pushed into the car and taken to the hospital. She has finally realized she hasn’t cooked any dinner.

Benny is left in charge of the alpacas who refuse to listen to him. They seem to only like Nathan. As soon as Benny puts them in the barn, they escape again to graze.

Lavinia complains that Benny didn’t give him enough to eat but Benny is confused because he thought he did.

In the meantime, the family dog, Sam, has decided to keep his distance from the family. Being a dog, he probably realized the peril he is in but his loyalty must be why kept him around.

While the kids are searching for him, Jack sees something in the well that horrifies him and that is when the parents decide to return home to scream at Lavinia for not taking good care of their son.

Lavinia is heartbroken and starts performing witchcraft. Nathan knows he’s not winning the father of the year award and decides to take a shower while Theresa is pissed off at him for not fixing the internet. She has lost yet another client the next day.

Nathan finds something slimy in the drain and freaks out. The next day, the fields have mutated pink bugs flying about and the tomatoes and peaches are ripe for collection, though misshapen.

Nathan bites into one as Theresa is screaming about the internet and, he realizes, just like his decision to cut off from the modern world, everything has turned into manure.

Disappointed that his beloved garden has produced tasteless fruit, he lashes out at everyone.

Jack goes to the barn one night and is screaming and when Theresa joins him, they are struck by a bolt of pink lightning that fuses them together.

The rest of the family takes them to the attic and dumps them away from sunlight. Nathan tries to start his car but it doesn’t.

That’s a problem. He has been spoilt by living around modern technology and progress. Now that he cut himself out, he runs out of options to save himself and his family because he is dependent on modern machines.

Had he been living without his car and internet or anything, perhaps he would have tried alternate ways of trying to escape. The truth was that Nathan only physically cut himself from the outside world. Mentally, he was still too dependent on the convenience provided by the modern world.

The minute his car doesn’t start, he loses it completely and takes a shotgun to kill the alpacas and his dog who have fused together. Lavinia is dripping with her own blood from the symbols she has carved on her body.

She and Benny are in the process of running away when Benny decides to get into the well and look for his dog. He is instantly electrocuted by pink lightning. Lavinia is a blubbering mess.

Nathan drags her into the attic to take care of her mother and brother who has now turned into a monster.

Meanwhile, Ward realizes the water is all messed up when his test paper comes out bright pink. Along with the sheriff, he wants to warn the neighbors but is pulled into the Gardeners drama.

COLOR OUT OF SPACE Ending Explained with Spoilers!

The monster is attacking Lavinia when Ward and the sheriff manage to save her. Nathan is acting even more berserk and is about to shoot at whatever is coming out of the well when the sheriff shoots him first, thinking he was going to kill Ward.

Lavinia has lost all reasoning by now and refuses to leave her home even when Ward tells her to.

Some strange things happen as the pink color seems to come alive. The sheriff is killed by the tree who has come to life.

Ward finds Lavinia near the well and when he touches her, her third eye opens to reveal a gross, pink world. Then she crumbles before him.

Ward seems to be in a psychedelic world where things keep blurring and becoming pink.

He finally escapes but not before he sees the Gardeners all sitting on the sofa watching television.

The color bursts and leaves, taking the house. Ward is saved but he finds himself in a colorless, ashen land.

Sometime later, he is shown staring at the water and the land, and thinking about never drinking the water from there.

Well, obviously. No one would want to even eat something there. Or breathe that very air.

Chances are that Benny was probably growing his own weed in the gardens which got mutated by the color and the effect of which caused the blur and the pink hues and the confusion.

Why even go there where there is a possibility of also radiation?

The movie had some strange, confusing scenes. The ending was abrupt and it will leave you wondering as to what is exactly going on.

You do feel for the characters, but you also wonder what compelled them to give up the world and come out to live in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t make anyone but Nathan happy.

Scare scale: 2.5/5