The Mist

Posted by Greg

March 24, 2008

Mist Opportunity

* out of *****

Man, I really wanted to like this movie. In my humble opinion, “The Mist” is one of Stephen King’s greatest short stories, equaled in creepiness only by another of his short stories called “The Jaunt”. I first read it about 18 years ago and have waited for a movie version ever since, but am pretty pissed that this is what I got. During the movie’s good parts I was barely impressed; during the bad parts I actually thought about leaving. I might come off a bit harsh here, but a movie with this pedigree of talent behind it should have been much better.

The story - the day after a freak electrical storm knocks out power to the small town that David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his family live in (and destroys a good portion of his property to boot), they notice a thick mist drifting in across their lake, which is strange but not unheard of. After assessing the damage, he takes his young son into town to pick up supplies for what looks like a long wait until the power comes back on. Along the way, they pass several convoys of military vehicles racing around town at suspiciously high speeds, and arrive to find the grocery store crowded with likeminded people stocking up. But very quickly, the mist that David saw on the lake arrives, enveloping the store in a pea-soup fog that - according to one bleeding man who races into the store just in time - is hiding something very nasty indeed.

King’s novella took two great fears - fear of the unknown and fear of isolation - and combined them into one great, tense little story that was tight, punchy and effective. Good characterizations and believable motivations kept you right beside David as he battled both the known and unknown as he tried to keep his son safe.

But while writer/director Frank Darabont (writer director of two other King stories, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, the latter one of my all-time favourites), sticks closely to this structure, he also takes a few liberties - some not bad and some awful. His biggest mistake is expanding the role of Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) and writing what has to be one of the most grating, irritating, wholly unbelievable main characters ever written for cinema. It’s been a while since I read the book, but I don’t remember her being at all this aggravating on the written page.

As night falls and the creatures in the mist - big and small - start to come ever-closer to the store, the huddled masses inside divide into three groups - those who want to leave and find help; those that want to stay and figure something out; and those who want to sacrifice someone at the behest of Mrs. Carmody, the Bible-thumping nutjob who thinks it’s the end of days.

The tagline for the movie is ‘Fear Changes Everything’, which, indeed it does - but this much? In the space of about 30 hours, Mrs. Carmody - ranting and raving about blood and sacrifice and the wrath of God - manages to get most of the people in the store on her side; indeed, she turns them into a bunch of religious fanatics who literally kill on command. That this woman - who would be either completely ignored or verbally accosted on any big-city street corner - could have this much power over a bunch of scared strangers is just absurd; it took me completely out of the movie every time she opened her mouth.

When she’s not on screen though, the movie is actually quite effective. A quick trip to the pharmacy next door for medical supplies turns into a gory and frightening encounter with some particularly nasty spider-things, and a night-time invasion of larger-than-usual insects is well staged. It’s too bad that the effects, by and large, were awful. I was yearning for Rob Bottin to come in and design some uber-scary rubber monsters like he did for The Thing instead of these lame CGI creatures.

Other than Harden, the performances are all solid throughout, with a nicely chosen supporting cast. Thomas Jane was a good choice for David; he’s smart and logical and makes decisions based on the circumstances around him - that is, when the script lets him. In one scene early in the movie, proof of the mists’ terrors sits about 20 feet away from an unbelieving crowd, but he doesn’t think to go and get it. Another has him seeing a large loading-bay door being pushed in and rattled by something outside that’s obviously huge and strong - but he only says he ‘heard something’ to the others, not “Holy crap, something huge is trying to get in!” as most of us would have.

The nail in the coffin for me though was the ending, which couldn’t have been more different from the book if it tried. The book’s ending was uncertain and scary; triumphantly vague and a little bit hopeful. The ending of the movie is bleak and final and has none of the finesse that was found in the novella.

Overall, the movie fails because of its inconsistency and lack of logical occurrence. Without the religious zealot sub-plot and lame ending, it’s a scary little movie, but those two things combined served as a 1-2 knockout punch for me. Game over.

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