By Marc S. Sanders
I’m tough to satisfy when it comes to monster movies. Too often they all look the same, or they behave with similar instincts and motives. There’s a new dinosaur movie coming out this year where they apparently stalk a military unit. So! I’ve seen seven Jurassic Parks. About the only monster that still gets under my skin are the acid pumping, knives for teeth xenomorphs of the Alien franchise. Everything else is been there, done that, and this includes the insect like pests found within the mist of Steven King’s The Mist, directed by Frank Darabont. Fortunately, there’s a better and much more engaging attraction to this eat ‘em up blood fest.
Within another small fictional town in Stephen King’s version of Maine, a dark and stormy night kills the power within the area. The next morning large fallen trees appear to have damaged the homes of David Drayton and Brent Norton (Thomas Jane, Andre Braugher). Phones and power remain out, but a curious cloud of mist grows over the lakeside area.
The gentlemen decide to go into town for supplies with David’s son Billy (Nathan Gamble) in tow. The checkout line of the supermarket is crowded with tourists and residents when a similar mist envelopes the building and clouds up the expansive front window of the shop. An elderly man runs through the parking with a bloody nose and urges the shoppers to lock the doors because there are things within this unwelcome mist that are terrifying and bloodthirsty. I’ll spoil this for you. The old coot is right. The creepy crawlies are thirsty for blood and hungry for flesh.
You’ve seen much of what Darabont’s screenplay adapts from King’s novella in similar iterations of horror. The wheel is not reinvented here and though an explanation of this mist and the organisms it conceals is spelled out, nothing is jaw dropping. Seems similar to how King’s The Stand opened. The cast of this B movie is what needs to be talked about.
Sure, there are doubters of things terrorizing the community just before the blood is spilled. Some characters make hard decisions despite the urging of others not to leave the store. Yet, when these flesh eaters become evident, then the end of days gospel of Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) permeates through the populace of the supermarket. That’s when The Mist grows a brain to demonstrate the power of fear, threat, and especially influence. The disturbing Mrs. Carmody exaggerates the purpose of this phenomenon with select biblical scripture both documented and I believe conjured on the fly by her. Now I am reminiscing back to tenth grade English when I studied Lord Of The Flies. A tribe forced to live together will ultimately divide.
Darabont so wisely reads a collection of different walks of life forced to either work together or work against each other, both sides with desperate means to survive. William Sadler is a dimwit mechanic who goes through three different modes of purpose during the film. He starts with a tough guy mentality, then on to timid fear and regret, and lastly, he’s reawakened to echo the call of Marcia Gay Harden’s religious zealot. Truly insightful because I often wonder how any person can so easily succumb to the influential beliefs of someone else. I mean you would have to be dense to allow that to alter your mindset, right? Well Stephen King and Frank Darabont remind me that there’s more dense people on this planet than wise. A dread of cabin fever only exacerbates to succumb to what someone will tell you. Therefore, let’s observe how the morons respond to the dominant personality.
The action for the sake of jump scares and expected horror does not disappoint too much. There’s screaming. There’s lots of blood. There’s lots of running too, and monsters and webs and teeth and claws. A sneak away trip to the pharmacy next door is neat centerpiece, but you’ve seen stuff like this so many times before. Frances Sternhagen gets the opportunity to use a makeshift, bug zapping, flame thrower that made me laugh and cheer.
The jump scares are not very effective, though. One bug thuds against the window pane. Otherwise, there’s monster stuff to absorb like tentacles, claws, teeth and webbing. I don’t go for slasher flicks and endless bloodletting gore like most movie makers of this genre attempt to achieve. Too much blood is boring and a sign of a lack of story.
I was invested in uncovering why this all started. I was taken with how a small group of people quickly engages in a mob mentality because their individual desperations refuse to satisfy. What instincts will undo people when hope dwindles and your companions turn on you? Darabont presents some effective moments for these questions. However, once the exposition was out of the way, I didn’t care who lived or died. My concern was knowing how whoever survives gets out of this dilemma.
The answers come and there is an unexpected ending tacked on by Darabont that is not recounted in King’s work. Trust me when I say I’ll never forget the conclusion of The Mist. Same as I’ll never forget the ending to The Sopranos. That’s not necessarily a compliment though because I think Frank Darabont was only adding unnecessary insult to injury. He resorts to using a terrible psychological epidemic for one last twist of his gleeful, mischievous knife in my back. I am not spoiling anything for you dear reader, but James Cameron went this route during a sequence in Aliens and it made much more sense, while offering convincing justification.
While you might like the chills and thrills of The Mist, be warned that it’s the ending that’ll leave you angered for days and nights thereafter. I had a furious urge to throw my popcorn at the screen.
Popcorn can be found on aisle 5 by the way. Bug spray on aisle 9.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 