The Mist - Review

Director/Writer: Frank Darabont
Starring: Thomas Jane/Marcia Gay Harden
Runtime: 2 hours 5 minutes

Frank Darabont's film version of Stephen King's The Mist is an effective yet strangely cheap looking movie.

Several of King's books involve normal Maine bumpkins getting caught up in terrifying events, supernatural or otherwise. In It, Pennywise the Clown torments the citizens of small town Derry, Maine. In Salem's Lot, an entire town is taken over by vampires and only a regular joe and a little boy can save the day. Even in The Stand, a book containing horror that has global impact, King's heroes are far from the bigtime. The Stand's villain, Randall Flagg, enters the novel as a down-at-his-heels drifter. The heroes turn out to be a young chick, a fat slob, and a man that could have been cast as an extra in Rawhide.

The Mist is similar. The novella appeared in King's Skeleton Crew (1985). That book is chock full of short stories, with The Mist the longest, at a little over 100 pages. Every story in Skeleton Crew deals with smalltime characters confronting horrors big and small. Perhaps this is why King's movies are never cast with Bruce Willis in mind. Ed Harris, Tim Robbins, Tom Hanks, sure. Bruce Willis, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, forget it. You can believe Tom Hanks getting freaked out in Maine, but Brad Pitt would somehow seem ridiculous.

I enjoyed the entire Skeleton Crew collection when I was a kid, back in my Stephen King fanclub days. The Mist was probably my favorite of the stories, though I agree with King that the ending of the story is a rip off. Survivor Type was creepy for its self-cannibalism (yes, self-cannibalism), and The Monkey was probably my least favorite. The Monkey is rumored to be the next film based on King's works and I am not looking forward to it, if only because I thought the story was depressing as hell. Maybe it's because I hated dolls, and still do.

So, The Mist. If you haven't read the story, you won't have a hard time getting the gist of it from the word go. The story opens in smalltown Maine. A thunderstorm hits. The next morning, a mist comes down from the mountains, thick and creepy. It slowly makes its way towards the town as the inhabitants pick up debris and go shopping for supplies.

Thomas Jane plays David Drayton. True to King-type, Drayton is your average man. He has a son, a nice house, a loving wife. The morning after the thunderstorm, he takes his kid into town to shop for goods. He goes to the grocery store. Moments later, a man runs toward the grocery store, blood on his shirt. He enters the store and screams that something is in the mist. He says that whatever it is, it killed his friend. He says the doors should be shut, and they are. The mist descends on the store, blotting out the parking lot and everything beyond. Silence.

The director, Frank Darabont, doesn't waste any time getting into the story. In fact, he follows King's novella almost to a T, as if the novella had been written as a script outline. This should please the people that complain, "The book was better, why'd they change it so much?"

The story might involve a creepy mist and the creatures inside it, but what goes on in the store is the film's true subject. Real people under incredible pressure. First, is there anything in the mist? And if there is, what is it? And if it's dangerous, how do we get out of this situation alive?

Though old, it's a good setup: jam different characters into a small space, apply exterior pressure, and watch the interior pressure rip them apart. That is, the pressure of not being sure about one another, then not trusting one another, and finally turning on one another.

The beauty of a story like The Mist is that it rings true. The "monster" takes a backseat to humanity. If you were surrounded by fog and forced to sit in a grocery store, what would you do? Be afraid of the mist, or be curious about the people around you, wondering if you could believe them and, more importantly, trust them?

King has always been good at the blame game. Seldom do any of his characters place the blame for something on the something that is trying to kill them. King's characters undo themselves by turning on their neighbors. It's the Twilight Zone technique, and King is the master of it.

Unfortunately, movies are made to be seen. Novels can take place inside a reader's head, but a movie has to be splashed right there in front of you. This presents a problem. Because if I say, "Fifty pink elephants knock over a building, then leap over a hill," it doesn't cost me a dime. Readers will picture it, they'll hopefully get it, and the exercise of imagining it won't distract them.

Movies can't do that. So while The Mist's set up is fine, and the characters are presented fairly well, the film's effects are a distraction. That's a nice way of saying that they suck.

Darabont's a big name, and so is King, so I can't see this film as having had a miniscule budget. That said, I don't know where the money went, but it didn't go into the effects. There is one scene in the film involving the tentacles of a ferocious beast. The tentacles look like they are from a 1970s cheapo flick. They're certainly no better than the original 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, and might even be worse. At least 20 000 Leagues used real footage of an octopus and some fake rubber tentacles. In The Mist, it's so obvious that the tentacles are computer generated that it's a supreme distraction.

I wonder why they bothered. The filmmakers had the mist, and all of the creepy what's-out-there stuff to go with it. If they had just kept it like that, the film would have lost nothing, and probably improved.

The film's story is good, as the people in the grocery store turn on each other and eventually split into two camps. One faction is led by Mrs. Carmody, played by Marcia Gay Harden. She is perfect for the role, because Mrs. Carmody is a hateful, shrill woman, and Harden can play those roles like they're nothing. Mrs. Carmody is a Christian fundamentalist, a Bible-thumper. She thinks the mist is an act of God, and that the creatures attacking the store are straight from the book of Revelation. The end is nigh, and Mrs. Carmody thinks she is God's messenger.

This is old territory for King. Many of his stories have crazy evangelical loons. It's a bit dated, and after a while you get pretty tired of Harden laying it on thick, but it works to a degree. Yet Marcia's ramblings feel very pre-9/11, and I was curious why Darabont followed the novella so closely and didn't try to update it.

Toby Jones makes an appearance. Remember what I was saying about King's characters? Jones plays a grocery store clerk who turns out to be a brave hero, and he is excellent. Jeffrey De Munn also shows up, and he is as good as always.

The entire film is enjoyable, though it doesn't nearly match Darabont's film versions of King's other tales: Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile. Indeed, you wouldn't know that The Mist is a Darabont picture unless the credits tell you so. The film feels a tad on the cheap side, and the production value is surprisingly lean.

The ending of The Mist is quite different than the story. It is satisfying, but a bit trite, as are the reasons given for the cause of the mist. The film simply feels like it is as dated as the story, written in 1985. You'll have to decide for yourself how you like the finale, because King has said that anyone who exposes the ending of this film should be hung by the neck until dead.

I'll take him at his word.

Photos: Yahoo Movies