Film Review: The Mist
Frank Darabont Adapts Another Stephen King story with Sticky Results
Anyone who has followed Frank Darabont's career of late won't be in the least surprised to discover that his latest release is an adaptation of a Stephen King story. However, those who caught The Mist on its criminally brief run in cinemas were in for a nasty wake up call. This is no uplifting prison buddy movie. There is no sunshine in the land of the nostalgic and there isn't a gentle giant making friends with a mouse anywhere to be seen.
Instead, The Mist is a messy, gorey, tense and genuinely frightening horror movie that puts to shame an entire legion of 12A Japanese remakes. Gone are spooky little girls giving Naomi Watts the creeps and in their place are a wealth of horrible creations, from acid-spitting spiders to colossal tentacled beasts the size of skyscrapers. However they aren't the only things to be scared of here and while it may be a cliche, the real monster comes in human form.
The Mist descends
Paying its dues with a pre-title nod to The Thing, the story opens with a violent storm breaking over a small town in Maine. The following morning the locals head to a supermarket, hoping for supplies to rebuild their homes when a freakishly thick mist rolls in from the mountains. Those who venture outside disappear, screams piercing the silence and soon, the people left in the store dig in and wait for the sunlight to return.
The characters here will be familiar to long-time King fans. Thomas Jane's David Drayton is Joe Public turned unlikely hero and there is the usual assortment of airhead teens, trigger happy rednecks and leather clad tough guys to back him up. What makes this more than just the latest round of Who Dies Next though is a biting and topical script.
Socio politics and the Horror Film
The single-location and close proximity of this mismatched group sets tension skyrocketing and its not long before the cracks begin to appear. With nobody answering the phones and no sign of help arriving anytime soon, ranting insanity starts to sound entirely rational. As Darabont himself has stated on the DVD commentary, this is a film about humanity under pressure and how someone can be your next door neighbour one day and your bitterest enemy the next.
As a result, the story touches upon just about everything that sets the media into panic mode. Ecological worries, invisible and ambiguous enemies clawing at the front door, suburban paranoia, all are put under the microscope and the conclusions aren't pleasant.
With some terrific performances (especially Marcia Gay-Harden's deranged warrior of Christ), some extreme violence and the most-talked about climax to a horror film since The Sixth Sense, The Mist deserves its reputation as a somewhat underrated classic. There are obvious parallels to be made with Night Of The Living Dead and while it might not be as good as Romero's zombie shocker, it is light years ahead of all the Saw series put together.
Oh my god! They killed the Shermanator!
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