DIRECTED BY: FRANK DARABONT
STARRING: THOMAS JANE, MARCIA GAY HARDEN, LAURIE HOLDEN, TOBY JONES
AFTER The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, writer/director Frank Darabont makes a third trip to the Stephen
King well (or a fourth if you include his short, The Woman in the Room) and comes up with another fascinating, flawed, but still above- average adaptation of the horror maestro's work.
Based on a novella from King's 1985 Skeleton Crew collection, The Mist probably won't inspire the same devotion that Darabont's previous adaptations have – it's far too bleak, depressing and cruel for that – but it has plenty going for it, not least the valiant attempt Darabont has made to reclaim the B-movie from the fumbling clutches of Hollywood's biggest hitters (Spielberg, Lucas and – dear lord – M Night Shyamalan) and their legion of high-concept imitators (see Cloverfield) to serve up a film that's purer in spirit and closer in scope to both the allegorical creature features of the 1950s and the nasty early work of John Carpenter.
The set-up is simple. After an electrical storm devastates his Maine property and most of the surrounding area, movie-poster artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) decides to head into to town with his young son Billy (Nathan Gamble) to pick up supplies for his wife from the local supermarket. Accompanying them is their neighbour, Norton (Andre Braugher), a big shot New York attorney with whom Drayton has had a fractious relationship but to whom he has now decided to play good neighbour, in a spirit of pulling together in times of need.
Following them is the blanket of mist they saw rolling in across the water from the mountain-set military base near their homes. Not that they initially give this much thought as they go about their business buying provisions and chatting with other shoppers (it's that kind of town; everyone knows everyone). That all changes when they reach the check-out queue: a bustle of activity, the sound of sirens and an old air-raid warning suddenly makes everyone feel a little uneasy. Then Darabont's camera homes in on an elderly man, bloodied, panicked and running towards the store, where he announces – in grand B-movie tradition – that "there's something in the mist".
There most certainly is and, as Darabont gradually reveals a weird array of elegantly creepy crawlies with acidic web-shooters, malicious mandibles and treacherous tentacles, the film's strengths and weaknesses come into focus. The latter mainly revolve around the fact that genre demands require characters to make illogical decisions to propel the plot forward at the same time that Darabont wants us to take everything very seriously.
This puts a bit of a credibility strain on proceedings, particularly in the early parts of the film as the hyper-rational Norton chooses not to believe Drayton's claims about monsters in the mist. Even though there's plenty of evidence, he reckons he's the victim of a cruel practical joke conceived by the locals as some kind of payback for a failed lawsuit he brought against Drayton. Which would have worked fine had Darabont spent enough time establishing the kind of small-town paranoia that results in locals and outsiders treating each other with mutual contempt and suspicion – but he hasn't, so Norton's subsequent actions don't make much sense.
Darabont is better at showing how a siege situation quickly breeds fear and insanity among the zealous and the weak-willed. When local religious basket case Mrs Carmody (a terrifying Marcia Gay Harding) begins vomiting portentous fire-and-brimstone nonsense about the end of days, she's dismissed as a kook – until her Bible-thumping declarations about the wrath of God start providing a comforting explanation for the ensuing chaos to some of the more impressionable customers holed up in the store.
Darabont uses this to ratchet up the tension by giving Drayton (and the small coterie of fellow citizens who haven't yet taken leave of their senses), even more to worry about than the external insectoid threat they already face: when it becomes clear that making human sacrifices is very much on the minds of Carmody and her newly righteous congregation, suddenly the mist doesn't look so bad.
It's just unfortunate that all the religious sermonising over-eggs the allegorical pudding; it's clear, for instance, that the film is intended as a reflection of the damaging symbiotic relationship religious extremism and fear have had in post-9/11 America. Darabont didn't need to make it quite so blatant, especially given his skill at creeping us out with the actual horror elements of the story. With very minimal use of music, he uses the mist and its terrifying contents to build up a palpable sense of dread and despair. His monsters are strange, almost ethereal, and as a result, they're a whole lot scarier. He doesn't go in for jump cuts or gore either, which makes the film far more unsettling and disturbing than the likes of Saw or Hostel, coming closer, in fact, to the chilling horror of the spider pit sequence from Peter Jackson's King Kong remake.
It is during these scenes that the film achieves a grace and a power that is all too rare in modern horror cinema and Darabont compounds this with jaw-dropping ending that reinforces how easy and how dangerous it is to lose all hope in humanity in severely troubled times. The Mist will leave you feeling a little bummed-out, but in a good way.
HOWLER OF THE WEEK
HancockThere's nothing like having an anally fixated superhero in a big summer family blockbuster. In Hancock, Will Smith's perpetually drunk hero repeatedly responds to being called an asshole by threatening to ram the offending party's head up the rear of one of their associates – something the film eventually deigns to show us at one point. Don't forget to take the children along!
The full article contains 993 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
