COLOUR FROM THE DARK (a review)

COLOUR FROM THE DARK (a review)

Based on an HP Lovecraft short story, directed by Ivan Zuccon in Italy, but in English. Stars b-horror movie staple Debbie Rochon and Tiffany Sheppis.

The story: at a small Italian (but English speaking) farm house, a young couple lives with the man's mute sister. The man has an injured leg. Then one night we see weird lights from the well. They drink the water anyway and things start to change. The sister can speak and the man's leg becomes healed. But then the wife starts acting weird (i.e. possessed) and the sister has horrible nightmares. Eventually the wife's possession spreads and all the people become infected with it and the weird light entity uses them up.

Um, okay. The synopsis doesn't sound like much and that might be my fault because I had trouble following this. There were a lot of dream sequences and even out of the dreams lots of weird stuff was going on and in some places I got lost. I'm not sure plot really is what matters most here so much as the creepy atmosphere and character work as things go from good to bad to worse. And for the most part, the directed did a decent job. It's a slower movie film, so there's time to spend on the characters and build the atmosphere. The movie works best when it is creepy, rather than shocking (which it goes for a few times).

What hurt it most was the lack of clarity and the fact that the characters really are passive. In PARANORMAL ACTIVITY the people realize there is a ghost/demon there and they are trying to stop it. Here, well, they don't do much. That and some of my confusion on and the fact that the characters were still pretty two dimensional makes this an okay movie, but not quite a good one.

*** MAYBE WATCH for creepy atmosphere ***