From Lovecraft to Cloverfield

Rating: 9/10 (22 November 2007)

EDITED REVIEW:
Stephen King likes to pretend he doesn't believe in traditional religion but he obviously does. He just likes to rain on everyone's parade. Whether this is a personal cruelty or just a joke, it still comes off as crass and, frankly, forced.
In THE MIST, a main character, Mrs. Carmody, a fundamentalist Christian living in Maine, of all places, preaches that what comes in the titular mist is vengeance from God. Stephen King makes it clear it certainly is. In fact, King is obviously angrier with misuse of technology than with misuse of the Bible. The end of Mrs. Carmody is savage in a way that appeases people who just want her to shut up, not really people who don't believe in God. What Mrs Carmody is saying is not truly out of the real of possibility, it's the way she says it. She's vulgar, curses a lot, and it seems obvious she is bipolar. This then is King's little joke, that you'd have to be literally mentally ill to be fervent. The next level down for King is fear. If you shiver for your life, you'll follow anyone. This many be true, but this is more a commentary on charismatic leaders than on religion. That Mrs. Carmody's message is at the right place and time to sway the shaken crowd isn't an indictment that she's looking for someone to lead, but rather that for the first time in her life her own faith seems to be showing itself. I don't see how anyone can fault Mrs. Carmody for that, but, like I said, she acts more like a demon than an angel, so it's not a great surprise that she gets hers.
As for the character David Drayton, played by the great Thomas Jane, he is the antithesis of Mrs. Carmody. He begins with a sense of fairness, as when he helps his neighbor, Brent Norton, after the thunderstorm, and watches it dashed to pieces, as when Norton accuses Drayton of trying to make him look foolish rather than trying to save his life. Of course, the deepest fall for Drayton is at the end, when he commits the ultimate acts of faithlessness one minute too soon. We can talk about whether it was murder or assisted suicide, mercy or thoughtlessness, but there is no doubt that whatever faith in himself Drayton had disappears in that moment, and he now realizes he should've had faith in the Almighty to rescue him, even if not in Mrs. Carmody, who obviously was not going to save anyone.
This brings up an interesting question: Did the people in the supermarket ultimately survive? If they did, was it not by the crazed and herself-murderous Mrs. Carmody that they did. Alas, we don't know. What we DO know is that the character played by Walking Dead alumnus Melissa McBride DID survive, and seemingly was rewarded for her own courage, if not faith. Speaking of Walking Dead, THE MIST is written/directed/produced by Frank Darabont, co-creator of that winning series, Jeffrey DeMunn (Dale Horvath on WD), and Laurie Holden (Andrea on WD), a veritable what-what!?.
The beasts from THE MIST are Lovecraftian, and the premise is slight, that the military has released them into our dimension from another, through an unknown scientific process. THE MIST predates CLOVERFIELD by one year, but these monsters and their sounds seem awfully familiar. Is it possible the films take place in the same timeline universe? Watching them back-to-back, there is a feeling that CLOVERFIELD is a continuation, as perhaps beasts which escaped destruction in Maine, although CLOVERFIELD seems to indicate those might've come from another planet.
The pace of this film is well-suited and there is little filler. The characters are briefly-delineated but sufficiently so. There is a feeling of anxiety but not rushed. The effects are well-done and the atmosphere is pretty great.
9/10