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"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown"

H. P. Lovecraft

Color Out of Space suffers from the same issue that almost every single Lovecraftian movie suffers from.

When you're trying to convey an entity that is totally beyond our understanding, beyond our comprehension, you will always be faced with an audience who's reaction will ultimately be 'what the hell was that all about?'

With a movie like Color Out of Space, that is the entire point. Forget about discovering a solution to a threat, but instead the growing sense of bewilderment and realisation of our inability to even wrap our heads around what it is that we are trying to understand in the first place.

A pandemic that isn't biological. An invasion that isn't physical. An entity that can't be understood, let alone communicated with or reasoned with. Yet it clearly mutates not only your reality around you but it also mutates you mentally and physically and at some point you realise there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Some movies like The Thing and Alien while being essentially Lovecraftian movies at least have a being with a physical manifestation that audiences can at least make some sense of.

Color Out of Space though aims for the more 'Event Horizon', and 'The Endless' type of entity. The type of entity where the biggest horror is the realisation that you can't even figure out what it is you're dealing with.

In such a scenario as difficult as it may be to accept for most people, knowlege, reason and faith crumble easily and gradually losing ones mind is perhaps the only logical reaction left.

If you enjoy contemplating unsettling scenarios then Color Out of Space will definitely tick that box. If on the other hand prefer experiences in you comfort bubble then I'd stay well away from this movie.

Over the past few years I've increasingly found myself enjoying low budget sci fi over the big studio cgi laden A list starred light and sound extravaganzas.

I think that the Youtube sci fi shorts channel "Dust" has had alot to do with this. The experimental nature of many of the shorts opened me up to the possibility that there still are many movie makers who want to tell their story unimpeded by big studio constraints and a broad test audience approved appeal.

Magellan was definitely made for an avid old school sci fi fan like me.

Sure the production may be clunky, the effects barely passable and acting not quite up there for Oscar nominations, but if the overall experience is something that I enjoy then I'm prepared to be far more forgiving for a movie that does not rely on millions of dollars thrown at it.

Does Magellan have its flaws? Plenty. Is the hard science underpinning the story iffy? In some cases, yes. Does the interior of the spaceship look like it was a set assembled in someones basement? Pretty much. Is it a 2001 knock off? Definitely. Does the story rely on a series of inept decisions for it to progress? Don't they all?

Would a mission like this ever rely on a lone astronaut? Of course not. But I get why it was possibly done in the case of Magellan. The budget for a start. But more importantly it's far easier to project a sense of isolation if the focus is on one lone astronaut and his gradual detachment from his life back home. You then also do not have the inter astronaut dynamics to deal with and muddy the experience if you have a team.

This leads to a very solitary, isolated and almost meditative experience where one Astonaut has the ability to decide how the mission needs to proceed, and in the experience of something genuinely extra terrestrial answer the possible question: Faced with this experience, would you leave everything behind to explore something greater than yourself?

And this movie gives an answer. That ending following the last message to mission control IS the ending and is beautifully done. I for one am glad that Magellan didn't cater to the spoon fed neatly bow tied up hollywood ending that so many lazy viewers desperately crave.

I've already watched Magellan twice, and will probably watch it again in future.

Loved it.

If you check my profile you'll find that I love indie sci fi movies as well as just plain bad movies. The more mind bending, convoluted and trippy, the better.

Flashout (alternately titled "Intermate") most definitely isn't a good movie and neither does it quite make the grade as a good bad movie. My grade essentially reflects the concept underlying the movie that I found pretty original and fascinating even though the execution itself was nowhere near where it needed to be.

Flashout essentially involves a simulation dating game where simulated realities are experienced by players of the game. Rather than just wearing a headset or plugging into an interface, players are actually physically transported into the game reality. Unknown to the players though, the simulation they enter is an actual existing reality within the multiverse. Or the game itself creates an alternate reality within the multiverse. I'm not entirely sure which.

As a result of this, the overseer of the multiverse sends in an alien "repairman". Essentially someone (or something) who locates and eliminates the anomaly.

Even with the limited budget and C list actors, this could have been a pretty good movie and definitely had cult potential. The movie relies almost entirely on cleavages, legs and orgasms to carry it all the way and while I'm not against sensual movies, that alone just isn't enough for Flashout. In fact it left me disappointed that a unique sci fi concept just didn't get the development it deserved.

Some reviews say that Flashout is campy and trippy, but I didn't really see the campiness in it. The Repairmans persuit of The Players was abit Benny Hill'esque rather than portraying the real threat it should have been so perhaps this is what some reviewers are referring to. Considering the subject matter though, while Flashout has a few trippy moments it should have been way more trippy than it actually is. Rather than aiming for camp, a more darker approach might have been far better.

Flashout also hinted very briefly into a Lovecraftian entity being the overseer of the multiverse but didn't quite follow through on that either which is a shame. While Lovecraftian entities in movies are best left unexplained, in Flashout it barely even makes its presence known.

I have actually watched this movie 3 times now but more for what Flashout should have been rather than what it actually is.

I've seen many low budget indie sci-fi movie with C list actors that have somehow turned into a much greater sum of it's parts. Alien Code, Panopticon, The Triangle (2016), Intersect, Darkening Sky, Project Ithaca, The Connection, The Endless. To name but a few. Flashout was sadly a massive opportunity missed.

Embarassingly though I have to admit that if a Flashout 2 came out, I'd probably watch it.