Movie Review: The Mist

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2008)

About 30 minutes into the new horror film "The Mist," you begin to wonder if writer/director Frank Darabont was ever hugged as a child.
By the time the closing credits start to roll, you've substituted "hugged" for "regularly placed into a burlap bag and beaten." In a way, "The Mist" is something both extremely familiar and entirely different for Darabont, who made his directorial debut in 1994 with a little movie called "The Shawshank Redemption." By following up with the excellent "The Green Mile" in 1999, Darabont had established himself not only as a great screenwriter and director of hope-filled, dramatic period-prison films, but as one of very few people to ever faithfully adapt a story by Stephen King, let alone two, with great success.
But although neither of these eloquently composed films is without its moments of sheer brutality, let's just say that there are certain things in "The Mist" that make The Sisters and "Wild Bill" Wharton look about as threatening as Mr. Rogers or Bob Ross.
That's not to say Darabont's third King adaptation, this one a straight-up jarring horror film laced with multiple throwbacks to the cheesily tentacled B-level monster flicks of years past, lacks any great performances, artistic merit or social relevance. It's absolutely filled with them.
But just as importantly, "The Mist," along with this summer's "1408"itself based on a King novellaproves that Hollywood horror is not only limited to "torture porn" or the remaking of genre classics. A little thought-provoking originality, along with some disturbing, realistic psychological and sociological terror, can cut an audience much deeper than simply relying on gruesome violence or scantily clad young teens in peril to do the job.
"The Mist" is as much about religious fanaticism and the hysteria-induced evil that humans are capable of harboring when frightened and without technology than the bloodthirsty contents of a widespread fog that rapidly approaches a small Maine town. After enduring a violent overnight thunderstorm, David Drayton (Thomas Jane, in a far, yet exceptional cry from his "Punisher" days), his young son (Nathan Gamble) and neighbor, Brent Norton (Andre Braugher), drive to the crowded town supermarket to stock up on food and supplies. Once there, a local man bursts screaming into the store, his clothes bloodied, claiming that something hidden in the impending mist has "taken" people.
The townspeople quickly realize that the supermarket is suddenly engulfed entirely in whiteness, and the doors are immediately sealed. Over time, three opposing factions begin to form within the store: a group headed by paternally protective David and store supervisor Ollie (Toby Jones), attempting to find a safe way to escape; one led by the rationalist Norton who rejects the hoopla and wants to venture outside to search for help; and a steadily growing huddle influenced by the ramblings of a fanatic, Bible-quoting doomsayer (the freaky Marcia Gay Harden).
Of course, Darabont wants us to question which is more dangerous: terrified humans with no answers blindly following a ridiculous solution that only complicates matters, or the otherworldly beasts that wait beyond the store's glass windows. The film is extremely effective in evoking a strong sense of claustrophobia, and a great deal of that can be attributed to Darabont's decision to hire the filming crew of TV's "The Shield," specializing in grittiness and hand-held camera-work. His choice to keep the monsters mostly hidden until we least expect it is also instrumental in the film's effectiveness.
"The Mist" makes troubling events all the more devastating by drawing us into the lives of its characters and emphasizing their humanity, only to rip our hearts out during its subsequent brutal scenes. The much needed comic relief is valuable.
Many audiences have been polarized by the film's ending, unexpected, ironic and unflinching. I thought it was brilliant, staying with you long after the lights come up and serving as a great capper to the boiling pot of suspense Darabont had established throughout the film.
***.5 out of ****