A promising effort that derails completely

Rating: 3/10 (17 March 2008)

I freely admit that I was a fan of the original novella on which this film was based. It has widely been considered one of the best stories in the Stephen King pantheon and there were a variety of rumors circling for years of prominent filmmakers promising to adapt it to the screen. After two successful prior King efforts, writer/director Frank Darabont seemed a promising choice, but there turn out to be problems with this choice. Darabont is a wonderful director with intimate character-driven stories, which was shown to good effect in both The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. However, Shawshank was a straightforward drama. The Green Mile, despite some elements of the supernatural woven into the plot, was anything but a horror film. Darabont tries his first shot at one of King's out-and-out horror stories and the result is a bust. A situation made unfortunate by both the promise of the set-up and the people involved. King's novella focused on a group of people who endure a freakishly severe storm and then take refuge in a local grocery store as a mysterious mist closes in bringing assorted horrors with it. While King's source story had its ragged spots, it worked well as an in-your-face scare story with an ambiguous ending. By contrast, Darabont ultimately wants the film to be something a lot more than what the story was, so instead of a rousing jump-out-of-your-seat scare film, we get a patchy social commentary. The end result is unevenly paced and packs a lot less impact than had Darabont just gone ahead and filmed the thriller aspects as the focus. Instead, we get a couple of mildly suspenseful encounters with assorted creatures (rendered with mixed results by CGI) and far too many scenes of tense human confrontations within the store that veer from sweaty whispering to over-the-top shrill shouting, none of which are a fraction as fascinating or insightful as Darabont apparently believes. The cast is made up of solid, reliable actors, which largely do well with their roles. Thomas Jane is a handsome and talented actor, but he is still waiting for his breakout role, and this is not it. He elicits sympathy as the focal character, a father concerned with the safety of his young son and the wife that he left back at home, and wisely eschews overdoing the action elements. The only time his performance fails to ring true are during his final histrionic moments. Laurie Holden is appealing, but does not have a lot to do here. Better still are Toby Jones and Frances Sternhagen (the latter largely underused). By contrast, the only major acting misstep comes from Marcia Gay Harden chomping the scenery as a borderline psychotic religious fanatic who makes matters worse inside the market. While I find the character largely believable (let's face it, people like this are becoming more and more common in the world), a little bit of her goes a long way and a character that felt like a supporting role in the novella seems expanded on film beyond reason to promote Darabont's new social commentary designs. Arguably the saddest part about the film is that it does succeed in a modest way until its final moments blow it completely out of the water, much in the way that the film Blow Out fell apart in its final moments, when its lead character acted in a totally incoherent and inappropriate way. While I have nothing against films, particularly horror films, having downbeat endings, it needs to grow naturally from the story and not seem to be there only to shock. The final moments of the film find a handful of the survivors fleeing the grocery store lest they become sacrifices for the religious fanatics and making a run for freedom in their car. A scant few minutes later they decide to commit suicide en masse, with Jane's father shooting his young son in the head, only to have...wait for it...the US army roll by a few moments later appearing to successfully drive off any monsters with their tanks and flame-throwers. So, in other words, any characters that have generated rooting interest end up dead as basically a punchline. Unlike a thriller like Seven, where the shocking conclusion seemed appropriate and to add to the film, The Mist serves up a pitch black ending that ultimately serves no purpose, seems tacked on, and features characters acting in ways completely at odds with their personalities. Why leave the store at all? They could have surrendered themselves to the fanatics and it would have made more logical sense. And having the army roll through to save the day sheer moments later in a perverse gotcha incredibly draws more attention to the stupidity of it all. Some viewers at my screening actually burst out laughing at how inane it was, which I hardly think is the reaction Darabont was hoping for here. Unfortunately, the ending has the tendency to tarnish any of the successful elements that happened before and leaves a really bad taste. It is ironic they chose this route along with a Thanksgiving/Christmas release time because I was completely at sea as to who they thought would give this climax good word of mouth - and judging from the dismal box office returns, apparently it was no one.