The Mist Review
by tom elce (dr-pepperite AT hotmail DOT com)July 4th, 2008
The Mist (2007)
3.5 out of 5 stars
Reviewed by Tom Elce
Directed by Frank Darabont
Cast: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Toby Jones, Laurie Holden, Frances Sternhagen, Andre Braugher, William Sadler, Nathan Gamle, Alexa Davalos
Rated: R (MPAA), 15 (BBFC)
"1408," the last filmic Stephen King adaptation before this, is a tricky act to follow. A haunting, powerful and unsettling ghost story that had the excellent John Cusack giving it his all in the leading role, the film was that all-too-rare triumph of a King adaptation. In following it, the next one has to step it up. Frank Darabont, then, is probably the director you'd most like to see helm said picture, since he did make both "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile," two of the greatest King films to date. For "The Mist," he imagines for the first time one of King's horror stories.
What Darabont, in his first feature-length outing since the divisive "The Majestic," has crafted is a dark horror movie just as much about monsters in the titular mist as it is about the people hiding from them, if not less so. For Stephen King's works are always about people who happen to be caught up in something definitive, something huge. Darabont never loses sight of this, combining his steadily unnerving story elements and appropriate sporadic gore with a human story questioning society's relationship with each other and the role of religious faith, too.
Pulled from the same-titled novella of the same name from King's "Skeleton Crew" collection, "The Mist" tells of a community of people - primarily, movie poster artist Dave (Thomas Jane) and his son (Nathan Gamble) - confined to a grocery store when a mysterious mist descends over their sleepy Maine town in following a recent storm. Far from being the type of mist one is generally accustomed to experiencing, this one has something strange about it. Whenever someone leaves the store in search of help (or loved ones) their screams can be heard moments later. Thus, fear suffocates these people to remain locked indoors. They are, however, far from safe, given the continually threatening Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), whose sermonizing on what she chooses to call "the end of days" turns deadly when she, and her hastily thrown-together followers, begin demanding sacrifices to appease God.
An examination of the monstrous both in the creatures lurking in the dense mist and inside the Bible-preaching Carmody, Darabont's film sets up two frightening central aspects for viewers to contemplate. Tentacles pull a bagboy underneath a door and Mrs. Carmody tries to pull others into acting out her ideas, the panic inspired by the former directly influencing the latter, which is far more a statement about how far people will go when they're confused and scared than it is a critique of religion. "The Mist" is a rumination on painfully evident mortality that hits notes both horrifying and frightening.
Thomas Jane played the bland sort-of hero in the underrated if imperfect "Dreamcatcher" and now plays a similarly unmajestical smalltown guy forced to face something he could never have imagined. In "Dreamcatcher" his character - and his friends, too - was faced with an apparent alien invasion that tore apart his world, while "The Mist" presents something not too dissimilar. The mist itself does derive from the mountaintops nearby a military base rumoured to be carrying out UFO-related experiments, which fittingly emphasizes that what the characters face is something truly out-of-this-world. Jane ticks the boxes as Dave, whose attempts to keep his son (himself played well by the young Nathan Gamble) safe are his driving force throughout.
The example of monstrous humanity is Mrs. Carmody, played to great effect by Marcia Gay Harden, whose occasionally histrionic level of acting is fortunately put to best use as the seemingly psychotic woman. Her controlling persona and reiterations of the bible's now- ominous words work towards convincing those confined alongside her to invest some faith in her belief that what's happening is an act of God, the apppearance of dozens of oversized insects inevitably accompanied by her acknowledgment of her book's plague of locusts. That her rantings subside when confronted face-to-face with the grotesque horror - as in a scene wherein an unfortunate walks outside attached to a rope and is pulled back only half-there - is key to writer-director Darabont's point. She's just as scared as everyone else, but without much of their rationality. In her exploitation of her fellow, confused people, she isn't too dissimilar to Isaac from "Children of the Corn" as one might initially expect.
That "The Mist" is the weakest of Darabont's forays into King territory is more a testament to the sublime quality of "The Green Mile" and "The Shawshank Redemption" than a criticism of the film in question. What he has crafted this time around is a stylish, multi- glazed horror film that puts to shame much of either the torture onslaught ("Hostel" and "Turistas") and also the onslaught of kid- friendly slashers ("Prom Night). "The Mist" ranks head-and-shoulders above the horror genre's shallow recent output, crafting multi-layered characters and scary horror set-pieces in synch.
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