An illogical outing into the mist

Rating: 3/10 (17 April 2008)

Mix in one part provincial town, one part alien monsters, a demented religious woman, some tentacles, a government scientific lab conducting possible life-threatening experiments unknown to the townspeople, and a bunch of people eager to cast away a lifetime of moral convictions to blindly follow the above mentioned religious nut, and you've got "The Mist".
Fantasy or not, if a story's premise and characters are based upon anything other than logical motivation, then you end up with melodrama, not drama. And this absurd potboiler evinces all the hallmarks of an incoherently written script. Yes, I know that we all act illogically sometimes; we let our emotions carry us away. However, even the most emotionally charged acts must have their basis in truth--the truth of the premise, and the truth of the characters. When we are constantly second-guessing a character's motivations, then truth has been sublimated to whim or license. This does not produce superb storytelling. I will use only one example to emphasize my point.
One of the more distasteful of these lapses in logic occurs when the majority of the people in the supermarket abandon their reason to slavishly follow and obey the dictates of Mrs. Carmody, a raging, religious lunatic. Yes, alien monsters that appear intent on destroying them besiege the people and they are fighting for their lives. But why are they so quick to forsake their personal ethics to mindlessly obey the commands of an Old Testament-quoting, "fire and brimstone," self-appointed, religious nut who is unquestionably a psychopath? The people in the store are not a group of fundamentalists who may possibly be swayed by such ranting, and even if they were, why eagerly surrender your reason and morals to carry out this woman's demented plans? Who the hell is she that she can claim such slavish devotion? Does she, and only she, have a direct link to the Almighty? The majority of the people in the store seem to think so. I say "Bah humbug!" The mob killing of Private Jessup, committed under the instigation of Mrs. Carmody, was nothing more than cold-blooded murder. Are we to believe that in this small town, where many people presumably know one another, all logic and moral decency are thrown out the window so that an innocent man must be killed in order to satisfy the blood lust of a demented woman? And if that is not enough, what about David Drayton's young son, Billy? Well, seeing that the aliens are still present, Mrs. Carmody decides that maybe it's time for the kid to go too--an Abraham-esquire sacrifice to a god whom seems decidedly disinterested in the fates of these terrified humans.
The ending of the movie was depressingly anticlimactic. Escaping the clutches of the lunatic crowd, David Drayton, his son, and three others get into a car and drive off into the mist--until they run out of fuel. Seeing a humongous alien monstrosity wade across their path, and believing that they will soon end up as alien fodder, they mutually agree to terminate their lives. The only survivor of this massacre, David Drayton, lives to see the mist dissipate, revealing soldiers in the act of cleaning up after the alien invasion. All he can do is look upon the dead bodies in the car and weep. Had he waited only a few minutes more, his son, and the others, would have lived to see the end of the alien invasion. If I were David Drayton, I might have not been so keen to end these people's lives, especially that of my own son, in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance for life. It is manipulation of the highest order and most disagreeable. This ending encapsulates for me all the intrinsic logical faults that appear to plague this movie. For although some of the acting and special effects are good, they cannot compensate for what is, essentially, an illogical outing into the mist.