The Mist

This Steven King adaptation, from writer/director Frank Darabont, is pretty well summed-up by our good friend Andre Harden, so why don't you check out his review? Much appreciated by me, Andre makes some very helpful and astute observations regarding the human villain of the story, Marcia Gay Harden's psychotic, uber-fundamentalist self-declared prophetess, whose role was the most challenging thing for me to unravel and understand about this film.

Now, I'm not one of those (many) people who thinks that Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption is The Film To End All Films. That being said, I do like his work, from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles all those years ago to more recent, hard-thinking gems like The Salton Sea and Collateral, and, of course, his tragically short-lived NBC series, Raines, starring Jeff Goldblum - which I think is the Police Procedural To End All Police Procedurals. Darabont excels at the human element of storytelling, and this is the strongest aspect of The Mist. His characters, and their interactions and reactions, are incredibly normal and natural, which is was makes this film so frightening - there's no sense that this couldn't happen to you. It was due to this that leads me to put the first 25 minutes of the story on par with John Carpenter's The Thing, which I hold up as the best of the genre. The human element, not the creatures, makes the story, and I believe that's how it should be.

My husband made a good observation as to why this pretty strong film was such a critical and commercial flop. While it successfully (and rightly) puts an axe and a match to the notion that humans are basically good and we don't need the trappings of civilization and authority to make us civilized, thus pissing off the humanists, it also goes hardcore on the fear-and-vengeance, violently prejudiced and hypocritical caricature of the fundamentalist Christian, thus pissing off the fundamentalist Christians. That being said, doing these things does force the viewer to think critically outside the light of the strong emotions these things provoke....but that's very hard to do, so many of us don't. As well, the heart of the story is a cautionary tale of what happens when people lose hope and give up, even in the face of a seemingly hopeless situation, and the ending is as shocking as it is bitter. Combine that with the ideological piss-off free-for-all, and you don't exactly have an easy film to like on your hands. If nothing else, you have to admit this film is gutsy.

Another comment on Mrs. Carmody, the fundamentalist nut-case (who shares a name with my very kind old grade 4 teacher). I've said before that why Stephen King succeeds where other horror writers fail is because he recognizes both good and evil as active forces interested in Man, and many of his works have included deus ex machina that are actually or implicitly God; as well, he has toyed a couple of times with the idea of God's grace in answering the prayers of desperate characters who don't necessarily believe in or love him. On the other hand, he also has displayed some pretty strong contempt for hypocrites and fundamentalists like Mrs. Carmody. But what really struck me about her was the sharp contrast to King's most famous prophetess, the kind, wise, loving, and very much in-tune with God Mother Abigail from The Stand. In fact, there are many parallels between The Mist and The Stand, and the problem with writing a masterpiece at such a young age is that no similar tales can add up, even ones from the same writer. The significant difference here, though, is that The Stand is about holding fast to hope, where The Mist is the exact opposite.

Before you watch The Mist, be assured that it is very, very disturbing. Not quite Anton Chiurgh disturbing, but it's up there. More like Wilford Brimley in The Thing disturbing. It's challenging, and it's interesting, and it is, at times, very gross, and it tells some very important stories. I can recommend it in good conscience.