by erin thursby scopes1925@msn.com
B- Rated R 127 minutes
For me the best horror movies are as much about the monster lurking in the darkness as they are about the monsters that lurk within us. When humans are pushed to the edge by fear, they can do the most unreasonable things. That being said, I would have been happier with a little less psychological drama and social commentary and a little more of the scary scary monsters from The Mist.
When the monsters did appear, I was a little disappointed by their CGI rendering, but I got over that fairly quickly. The actors made the scenario real enough for me that I stopped caring about it.
Director Frank Darabont has had worked with Stephen King adaptations before: The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption. Neither of those were actually horror films. Over a dozen years ago, after Shawshank, Darabont promised that he would direct and adapt King’s novella The Mist. All this waiting has hyped the film considerably, and there are eager horror fans who have been waiting years to see the flick. Was it worth the wait? Maybe not, but it’s still a decent piece of horror celluloid.
Because The Mist is an adaptation from a Stephen King story it is, of course, set in a small town in Maine. After a violent storm, Movie poster artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his kid Billy (Nathan Gamble) are making a run to the super market, with their arrogant neighbor Brent Norton (Andre Braugher) in tow. While there, an unnatural mist rolls into town, trapping many of the townspeople inside a supermarket. Since the power is out, everyone is restocking. They shut the doors to the market when townsman Dan Miller (Jeffrey DeMunn) comes running in, yelling “There’s something in the mist!”
Soon, people are forming little groups, trying to decide what to do. In the meantime, David discovers that the generator’s intake is backed up. Despite the disturbing sounds he’s heard, a few of the locals decide to send a bag boy to unclog the intake valve outside. Said bag boy makes a tasty snack for hungry tentacles.
My favorite character in the story has to be the unlikely hero of Ollie, one of the supermarket employees, played by Toby Jones. He seems so ordinary at first but soon proves he’s made of sterner stuff than you might think.
Central to the story is the doomsaying, apocalypse-preaching Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden). She’s way over the top, a bit crazy and you love to hate her as she spends all her time frightening these already scared people.
Frances Sternhagen plays Irene, the tough but likable old school teacher, a character that’s sure to be loved by the audience. She also has the most cheer-worthy bits of violence in the film and at one point creatively defeats a monster with a can of bug spray and a lighter.
The movie’s almost like a social experiment, a high pressure cooker that condenses humanity down to its core elements. Some people are more than we expect them to be, but most turn out to be uncivilized and irrational in the face of fear.
The anti-religious messages are sure to annoy most Christians, at least a little. It’s a bit heavy-handed for my taste. The movie is very cynical about humanity’s capacity to rise to the occasion when disaster strikes. This cynicism can be funny in the beginning of the movie, but as it progresses, things just get dimmer and darker. If you like happy, or at least hopeful endings, do skip this film. The real suspense isn’t about which people will be eaten by the monsters of the mist, it’s about how sane the survivors can stay.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
