The Colour Out of Space based on the Lovecraft story. Takes place in the 1960s, same as the story a meteor falls into small rural town, weird things happen, livestock and crops mutate and people become paranoid.
But heres the twist. Its not a space disease or radiation. Its just color. Most of the movie is shot in black and white, and the meteor is making objects in the movie gain color and the effect is progressively spreading throughout the movie. The area infected by the meteor is gaining color, a color zone is spreading about a meter an hour (in universe), there is a divide where the grass is green and cut off into grass that is gray. Anything introduced into the color zone slowly gains color. And any colored object that is brought out of the “color zone” into the “black and white zone” retains its color and from there the color spreads into objects that touch it. And thats the first conflict of the film.
The characters are scientists and military men who dont understand what is happening and because they cant comprehend it they immediately assume the worst and theorize the color to be a biological weapon or a space virus. They take a flower from the zone to study it and then also mail a color sample to washington dc for research, and when the area under the flower starts to spread color, havoc breaks lose and as they try to intercept the color sample in the mail, and they try their best to destroy the ground zero of the color spread or just do their best to quarantine it within the town.
They imprison the townfolk “contaminated” by the color, not heeding to pleas that the color isn’t affecting them negatively in any other way. Tough general guy gets color on his hand, cuts his hand off to save himself and he then gets gangrene and blames it on the color. A black farmerhand starts to drags the government folk for destroying the land and the people they claim to be helping and does nothing to relocate the noninfected. He then realizes that the government doesnt have the means to cure the infected within the containment area, and that the military instead intends to nuke the “colored” townsfolk, his goal is to help them escape, this is the main story of the film.
Pad the movie with funny scenes, like having the military try to napalm the place down, only to see the fire turn red and then spread the color quicker. Or having them stare at a rainbow in fear, calling it an alien death ray. A parody of the Wizard of Oz color scene, where Dorothy opens the door to see Oz for the first time, with screaming scientists reacting to the color being just outside their tent. Have a scientist guy say something like “the only thing that spreads as fast as the alien virus is the black plague. coincidence? I think not!” Have a scientist struggling to describe colors to another scientist through the phone, crying because even he cant understand what he’s saying.
The movie could end cutting to an european beach where onlookers watch as the water turns blue, meanwhile a radio reports that america is collapsing because the government has exhausted all its budget and resources in trying reverse the spread of the color.
The underlying message of the movie is that progress cant be stopped. Also, dont fear the unknown. Honestly I could only see Jordan Peele directing it, but I cant be choosy. I know Annihilition (2018) got a similar concept but I feel like this idea could also be explored while tackling themes of progress and a commentary of poor relief for disaster victims.
