Director: Frank Darabount
Starring: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, William Sadler, Jeffrey DeMunn, Andre Braugher
Tagline: "Fear Changes Everything."
Random Trivia: This is Darabount's third King adaptation, but the first actual horror. The other two were The Green Mile, and The Shawshank Redemption. Both William Sadler and Jeffrey DeMunn appeared in all three. The painting David (Thosmas Jane) is working on at the beginning of the movie shows Roland, the last Gunslinger, with the Dark Tower looming in the distance. The rights to the Dark Tower series are currently held by J.J. Abrams.
Do not go into The Mist.
Really, the concept isn't that far off from 1408 - you didn't want to go into that either. Although maybe, actually, this is 1408 in reverse. Consider the idea that the evil fucking room in that tale was filled with poison gas, or at least, that's what it was like - but stay out of that room and you're fine (or so says Samuel L. Jackson). Now consider that the whole world is covered in poison gas - or at least an evil fucking mist with... things... in it. Whatever you do, STAY in the room you are in. Do NOT go into the mist.
And here you have the concept for one of Stephen King's classic short stories - bordering on novella length, really.
Frank Darabount spent a long time trying to get this movie made, and if you can't tell by The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, he's very passionate about King's writing. I mean really, those are two of the best King movies, and the Shawshank Redemption has aged better than any movie I can think of and is probably on a lot of favorite lists.
Now, those two films were straight drama. The Mist, obviously, is at its roots a horror story. Yet while horror is the backdrop, the message is again what's important. This is a movie not about horror per se, or monsters, but about how we react to catastrophe, and what good, if any, faith does in such times - faith in yourself, faith in others, faith in a higher power - oh, and then there's this little bit about religion and mass hysteria.
This is the second part of my Stephen King double bill. I'm a little less baked and need a few hits to even things out.
We open with David Drayton (Thomas Jane), his wife, and son - weathering a storm at their house by the lake. The storm itself is not important. The aftermath is. We find his boathouse smashed by a neighbor's tree - Brent Norton, played here by Andre Braugher, a bigshot lawyer who Drayton's already crossed swords with once. We find his work - a commissioned movie poster; Mr. Drayton is an artist, you see - ruined. And we find an eerie mist rolling across the lake, coming down from the mountains. This is an excellent little start to the movie, or so says my hastily scratched notes.
Now, this movie is, after all, entitled The Mist. So we know that's a big to-do. Drayton and family does not, and so he sets out to town for supplies, taking his son, his neighbor Mr. Norton, with whom things are currently - but not completely - patched over, and leaving behind his wife.
In retrospect, not a great move.
Ok, before we go on - Tom Jane. Excellent actor. This is his second outing in a Stephen King flick, and the much, much better of the two. The other one - the cinematic abortion that was Dreamcatcher. We won't even get into that. But Jane is a guy who really, really should be getting some better roles, and for whatever reason - dumb luck, bad casting, etc. - it hasn't quite worked out. He made a fucking awesome Punisher, only to be dragged down by Travolta hamming it up. He was in Deep Blue Sea, which has a special place in my heart because I love cheese horror with sharks in them... maybe Hung will work out for him. Lets hope, but the guy should be in movies, not just an HBO series.
Now. Back to The Mist. The Mist is a disaster movie. It's about being locked in while the world around you is under attack. Where things want to get inside and eat you.
By the time Drayton hits the supermarket, we get an idea of what's going on. There's army guys everywhere, after all. Inside, there's all sorts of commotion, and we're introduced to bible thumping, holier-than-thou Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), who will serve as the movies antagonist when creepy monsters aren't around. And then... in rolls the mist. Preceded by Jeffrey DeMunn's Dan, an otherwise normal guy who runs in screaming about something... in the mist. Within moments, the doors are shut, the mist has enveloped the supermarket... and the sides have begun to form.
See, in any given survival situation with more than a few people, the natural order of things will not simply fall into place. There will be a struggle for power, and, if a group is big enough - even, say, 30 or 40 people - a divide in thinking which may not be fixable is likely to occur. Meaning you will wind up with two, or more, groups with opposing ideas, and a serious problem in getting people to work towards a common goal.
It sounds like a fucking pep talk, but it's true.
Inside the shop we see it first hand. It starts with the bag boy, Norm. The generator breaks. David thinks he hears something outside, but a couple of macho locals, and Norm, the bag boy, dismiss this, and decide they're man enough to deal with whatever is going down. The locals raise the loading doors, Norm ventures out... and is taken. Grabbed, by nasty looking tentacles that rip chunks out of him until they drag his bleeding carcass off to whatever waits to feed at the end of them.
It's macho stupidity, but it earns David Drayton a few followers. Ollie, one of the employees. The macho locals, at least for a while. A couple of local teachers (one played by Laurie Holden, who in another movie might have been Jane's love interest). On the other hand, his neighbor, Brent Norton, having not seen it, refuses to believe the story - and here we start to see the divide. Those who believe there's something in the mist, with David. Those who do not, with Brent (who thinks everyone is playing a joke on him). And those who believe whatever is happening is due to a lack of grovelling before God, with Mrs. Carmody.
Carmody is a whackjob, but a dangerous one. If you've been around small towns, you might know someone like her. In years gone by you'd probably find more of her type - a lack of education, a high amount of self-righteousness, and blind faith in religion. The kind that would yell "string 'em up" if the timing was just right, or who might stir up enough bad blood to send out a lynch mob. All whilst shouting about an eye for an eye, smacking a hand on the good book.
That's essentially what happens within the store. Brent's people leave, and we can assume they meet a bad end. Drayton's stay, as does Carmody's. But each day, and each encounter with yet another otherworldly creature, brings more people to her side, and her preachings become more and more old testament. The Lord, he wants your blood, Amen.
By the time Drayton takes his son and his remaining followers with him out the door, headed for his pickup, she's already goaded them to one blood sacrifice - the killing of a local soldier. The boy was to be next.
I can't tell you about the best part of this film. I absolutely, 100% cannot spoil the ending. It is, without question, the biggest FUCK YOU HOLLYWOOD ending I have seen in years, if not ever. See as much as I like social commentary going on here - the movie isn't all that scary. The CGI monsters are hit and miss. The tentacle scene is cool, and there's a flying dragon-like creature that looks decent, but some of the other bugs - most of the evil fiends roaming in the mist, at least the smaller ones, look like bugs - are pretty cheese. There's a few giant creatures we never get a clear shot of, and the scope and scale of them is impressive, but what we do see - we see too much of. The typical horror fault. Reveal too much, and it stops being scary, because we can get our eyes, and our minds, around it. We adapt to it. The scariest thing out there is the unknown - Darabount could have used a reminder of this.
But the ending... the ending takes this movie from a 3/5 or 3.5/5, strong social commentary but not overly creepy movie, to a HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT stage. In the end, it's still getting a 4/5 - it's by no means perfect - but damn. Bravo on that ending, Frank!
One last cap - the artwork mentioned in the random trivia.
Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)
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