Intervision Picture Corp. has summoned unspeakable horror from worlds beyond our own with the first ever release of Henrik Möller’s artful, award-winning exploration of Lovecraftian terror – Feed the Light.
Following a string of successful festival screenings, this underground Scandinavian riff on “The Color Out of Space” has arrived on Blu-Ray and DVD so a wider audience can finally be summoned to do its bidding. From producer/director/co-writer Henrik Möller comes a new landmark in underground Swedish horror, inspired by equal parts H.P. Lovecraft, David Lynch, and something far more disturbing:
“When her daughter is abducted by her ex-husband, a young mother will track the missing child and its father to a mysterious institution. But once inside, she will find herself trapped in a hallucinatory netherworld where reality turns amorphous, survival becomes parasitic, and an infested darkness lives – and feeds – in the light.”
Bloody Disgusting caught up with Möller to discuss this modern classic.
“I have always wanted to make a Lovecraftian film,” Möller told us in this exclusive interview. “The Color Out of Space is a film with a cosmic sensibility. The great unknown that brushes up against us and is never fully comprehended. My co-writer Martin Jirhamn and I rounded up the stories that had ingredients that we liked and could be translated to a film with a budget of 14 000 dollars. The Color Out of Space is one of his scariest because it doesn’t have tentacles och claws. It’s more like a virus or radioactive substance. We never fully learn its purpose here on earth and that makes your imagination kick into high gear. I remember The Festival and From Beyond where other stories we discussed. But eventually, we went beyond, updated it to the present time and created our own little universe with characters and detailed backstories that never had time to be explored in the finished film.”
Die-hard Lovecraft fans are an extremely passionate bunch, Möller discusses the pressure to satisfy them:
“Well, we never told anyone about the Lovecraft influence until I went over to the Lovecraft festival and thoughtlessly spilled the beans,” he explained. “I don’t think people looking at the posters will expect a faithful adaptation. But hopefully they will like it because the film has many Lovecraftian elements in it: The disturbing idea that there is an unknown world lurking just behind the invisible veil that is our reality that slowly begins to unfold before us, an unnameable entity that affects the environment in strange unhealthy ways, people worshipping the entity with high hopes of enlightenment, the finding of a book (in this case a pad) that contains information about the horror, obsession, insanity and some people don’t simply die but meet ends worse than death…”
While the film has a unique look having been shot in color with a few pops of color results in bold, striking imagery, Möller explains why it was dialed back:
“To make a long story short, due to budgetary constraints we didn’t have equipment good enough to produce the look we originally wanted,” he reveals. “So, we opted for the black and white grainy look that would emphasize the dirty concrete tunnels of the underground world we would descend into. The look of the three floors came from watching black and white TV as a child. Sometimes it could be slightly tinted blue and sometimes slightly green depending on the TV and the antennas reception. That way you couldn’t always remember if you had seen it on a color TV and your memory of it became like a distant dream.”
Aside from the obvious Lovecraft influence, he talks about some of his other inspirations.
“There were tons of literary and visual influences that gelled,” added Möller, who confirmed David Lynch and David Cronenberg were among his inspirations. “Any filmmaker with the aspirations to create a good horror film should look at the work of David Lynch. He was one of the early pioneers in using advanced sound design to create an uncanny feeling. Cronenberg is a master screenwriter of original and disturbing ideas. These two directors know that the unknown can be terrifying but that it also breeds mystery that intrigues us.”
Given the positive response Feed the Light‘ has received, Möllerd has considered going back to the Lovecraft.
“I certainly would but I would leave the literary adaptations alone,” he explained. “Although I firmly believe in updating Lovecraft, it would be fantastic to make a period piece set in Dunwich or Kingsport. Lovecraft himself encouraged others to use his creations in their own work and to add to and expand upon it. I think that is the best way to go.”
The Feed the Light Blu-ray can be purchased on Amazon or through other retailers.
