Posted on: November 27th, 2007 REVIEW: The Mist
Before I get into my review of the latest big-screen Stephen King adaptation, allow me to vent briefly.
The state of movie theaters is at an all time low. I’m not referring to the technology or the cleanliness (which, still is far from stellar). I’m pointing my angry, money-paying fingers at you – the audience. The entire row behind me talked through the full duration of the movie.
It still blows my mind that talking during a movie still goes on and is accepted. We’ve had these guidelines – no talking, be considerate, turn off electronics, etc. – for years. Even when cavemen would sit around the fire, scribbling funny little stick figures on walls in front of other cavemen, these ideologies were existent. How long is it before evolution kicks in and we actually wise up to the principle of consideration and respect for other people? I could ponder for hours the reason for these pricks to continuously disrupt the movie theater, and still not come to one validating point for this atrocity against genuine law-abiding movie folk such as myself.
The noise pollution in my theater was so bad that after the feature I demanded a refund, which I was granted without hesitance from the frighteningly understanding staff. I felt a moral dilemma in receiving this refund (in the ironic form of a free admittance pass), as aural obstructions aside, I had a great time with The Mist. On that note, cue the review.
I loved this little flick. I use the word ‘little’ to describe the intimacy of it. In no way, however, is the film little in suspense, story or heart. Its terror is personal, in your face and confined – the kind of terror that affects you in your gut. The kind of ‘little’ that doesn’t rely on music cues to tip off the viewer to begin covering their eyes. The kind of ‘little’ that you want out of a horror film, but that we haven’t seen in quite some time.
The Mist, based on the 1980 Stephen King novella of the same name, takes place in a… you guessed it… small mountain town in Maine. After an unusually bad storm, David Drayton and his son find themselves trapped in the unusually busy local supermarket when an unusual fog clouds the town. Naturally, the townsfolk panic and begin to go all ‘Lord of the Flies’ on one another. Oh, and I almost forgot the part about the horrific creatures in the mist outside.
Yes, you read that right: horrific creatures. What begins as a toothed tentacle quickly escalates into primitive locust-esque insects, giant acid-web spinning spiders and colossal crab-like elephant monsters. Though some of the CG graphics seem a tad dated, these creatures don’t lack in the grip-the-armrest-with-fear department. They make mincemeat of their unfortunate victims.
The Mist is a breath of fresh air into the monster genre. Frank Darabont, who wrote the screenplay and directed, embraced the challenges of tackling such a fantastical story and brought it down to a real, blue-collar world. Although Darabont is an old hand with Stephen King entities – he previously directed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile – this is his first directorial foray into the horror/suspense genre. I think it’s his lack of precedence or saturation with the genre that gives this film some true heart and doesn’t only rely on the extreme and the obvious to move the story forward. The real star of the story is the heart put forth by the performers, most notably Tom Jane as the lead and Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Carmody, chief peace-disturber and extremely religious zealot convinced that their horrible situation is that of biblical influence. These characters are so very real in a very real environment, but under these very unreal circumstances. Just as we genuinely feel Drayton’s (Jane) love for his son and determination for survival, we also believe to the tee that Mrs. Carmody is so sure that judgement day has arrived. She does her job so well, that every minute of screen-time her character gets, we hate her more and more.
Let me get back to ‘little’ again. The Mist knows its limitations and boundaries. Monster films suffer most by getting out of hand rather quickly and trying to involve too much to the already existent struggle. Before you know it you get these grand revelations and every film yearns to be War of the Worlds. A great example of this is another Stephen King property, Dreamcatcher, which began with a terrific isolated fear, but blew up way beyond the scope of what the audience could take in, making it unwatchable past the first twenty minutes. Not this one though. We never get the answers to the mist, to the creatures. As an audience, you know just as much as the characters in the film, and they know just as much as any small town amidst an super-natural attack would. Granted, we do get little hints along the way courtesy of a young soldier, the story keeps its grounding in a pure tale of fight and fright.
I’m not going to spoil the ending for you, but this one is a killer. This is the Empire Strikes Back of monster movies. Purists of the novella need not throw their stones though, as Darabont didn’t change it. He went beyond the story’s last pages, extending it in his own way. I will say that it is one of the bravest endings in any horror/suspense film. This ending isn’t meant to appease the masses. It’s an absolutely gut-wrenching, humanizing scene that will no doubt cease many people’s thoughts of re-watching it. In that good Schindler’s List way, the ‘brilliant film, but I’ll be damned if I watch it again’ kind of way. On the contrary though, I’ll no doubt be watching (and pimping) this flick repeatedly.
In short, forget everything you know about modern horror/suspense flicks, and forget everything you think you know about The Mist. For what it’s worth, the trailers out there just don’t do this little underestimated flick justice.
Listen to me… getting all MISTy eyed.
Frank Darabont, Tom Jane and Stephen King for the win.
One Response to “REVIEW: The Mist”
-
TEN of TERROR #7: The Mist « Giant Killer Squid - Film, Comics, News, Reviews and more Says:
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:20 pm[...] this film came out in November of ‘07, I wrote what could be one of my most praising reviews yet and I still stand by that, making our seventh entry in TEN of TERROR the adaptation of the [...]