FAST COLOR
Hunted by mysterious forces, a young woman (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) with supernatural abilities must go on the run when her powers are discovered. With nowhere else to go, she flees back to her family and the farmhouse she abandoned long ago. There, while being pursued by the local Sheriff (David Strathairn), she begins to mend the broken relationships with her mother (Lorraine Toussaint) and daughter (Saniyya Sidney) and learns that the power she needed was inside her all along.
FULL SYNOPSIS
In a drought-ridden desert landscape where everyone is struggling to get by, Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is on the run. She makes it to a motel where she is safe until her uncontrollable powers act up. Ruth convulses, causing a literal earthquake that reveals her hiding spot. She steals a car and hits the road, headed for the desolate town of Garrison where she grew up, a place she abandoned years ago.
She stops at a roadside diner where she meets Bill (Christopher Denham), a seemingly friendly fellow who gives her a ride when the police discover her stolen car. It quickly becomes clear that Bill’s invitation was a set-up – – he’s been pursuing Ruth. In a violent struggle, Ruth escapes Bill’s vehicle and makes her way to a bar, where a bartender tells her about a vacant motel to spend the night.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Dean Ellis (David Strathairn), the local police captain, follows Ruth’s trail from the car wreck to the bar. When Ruth returns to the bar the next morning, the bartender confides the cops have been looking for her. Ruth is left with no other option but to seek sanctuary at her mother’s farmhouse where her mother Bo (Lorraine Toussaint) is raising Ruth’s daughter Lila (Saniyya Sidney), who Ruth abandoned as a baby.
Ruth’s return to the farmhouse is a shock, especially to Lila who has never known her mother. Lila learns the truth about her family: all three generations of women have special abilities. Bo and Lila are able to disintegrate objects into particles and spin them back together, their transformation accompanied by fast-moving streaks of color. Ruth’s powers are more extensive and incited by convulsions she can’t control. Ruth explains that as a teen obsessed with punk music she started doing drugs, which stopped her convulsions. When she became pregnant she felt
unprepared to care for a baby, so she left Lila with Bo and took off. Now Ruth has cleaned up, but along with sobriety her tremors have returned.
Bo and Lila slowly grow less suspicious of Ruth. Lila tries to help Ruth harness her powers, and Bo shares an old family journal that helps Ruth understand her lineage. Long-kept secrets are revealed and the women grow closer, coming into their own powers. But both Sheriff Ellis and Bill are separately on the search for Ruth. As Bill and his colleagues who want to perform science experiments on Ruth close in, her family tries to protect
her .
Ruth realizes to be safe she must move on, but before she does, she confronts Bill and the entire town in a bold move. She taps into her powers with miraculous results that nobody expects, and Bo likewise reveals her own previously hidden capacity for transforming the world. The three generations of women realize that although they are different from others, they are powerful enough to survive and proudly own their true identities and powers, which can change a damaged world for the better.
