The Mist
Directed and written by Frank Darabont
Starring Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden
Classification: 14A
Rating: **
Since Stephen King is precisely what the movie biz aspires to be - both popular and prolific - the two have teamed up a lot over the years. And no one has promoted the collaboration more vigorously than Frank Darabont. However, in his adaptations of the King oeuvre, a scary trend is starting to emerge. His first, The Shawshank Redemption, was splendid; the second, The Green Mile, wasn't; and now The Mist continues the slide. How far? Well, I wouldn't say this is laugh-out-loud risible, but there are definitely moments. Still, you might want to consider sitting through the uneven thing just to get to the ending, because that's quite something. You may love it, you may hate it, but forget it you won't.
Back to the beginning, where, in King's usual New England setting, a vicious bout of weather topples trees, cuts power lines and wreaks its customary havoc. However, in a neat twist, it's not the storm but the calm after that poses the real danger here. That's when David (Thomas Jane) and his young son drive off to the village supermarket for provisions and, through the store's plate-glass front, what should appear but an encroaching white mist.
Inside, a folksy microcosm has gathered - the young, the old, locals, out-of-towners, a trio of soldiers, a tattooed biker, a hot babe (Laurie Holden) - to stare out at the shroud and offer their various explanations. The environmentalist suggests pollution from the chemical plant. The conspiracy theorist points to secret goings-on at a nearby army base. The strict rationalist, never a long-lived role in any King yarn, heads out in search of empirical evidence. And the holy roller, of course, proclaims with a satisfied smile, "It's the end of days."
Since we know King, we know better, and eventually so does David when, in a remote corner of the store, he witnesses a giant clawed tentacle reach in from the mist and chow down on the stock boy. He saw what he saw, yet his attempts to convince the others fall on skeptical ears, giving rise to awfully earnest debate and the first of the movie's near-risible moments - the laughs are as rich as they are inadvertent. Happily, the level of skepticism markedly declines with the appearance of locusts the size of Rottweilers, giant spiders with cutting-edge webs and a cinesaurus lizard whose every footfall registers on the Richter scale.
But these are just the monsters outside. Time to cue Stephen King's serious literary half (okay, quarter): The monsters within are a whole other issue. Seems that the holy roller (Marcia Gay Harden making like Aimee Semple McPherson) has seized on the general panic and, uttering dark imprecations on the order of "There's no court of appeals in hell," has found a mass of converts to her fundamentalist cause. Moreover, this Bible mob is proving just as rapacious as any computer-generated critter. Well, between the marauders on both sides, we soon have quite the spillage of corpses - burned, chewed, bisected, a real mess. What's worse, with the poor stock boy among them, there's no one left to yell, "Cleanup on Aisle 3."
Darabont shoots the carnage with hand-held cameras and, by his own proud admission, with the hope of achieving that low-budget horror look. But even here he struggles, settling for a style that's too polished to be cheesy yet too cheesy to be effective. Since visuals have never been his strength as a director, neither the creatures nor the cast they devour fare too well, although that mist turns in an evocative performance - it can be lovely in its eeriness. No, Darabont is more of a narrative guy and when, as it sporadically does, a plot turn briefly tweaks our interest, so does the movie - no more keenly than in the final frames.
King gave his story an open-ended conclusion, but Darabont is having none of that. His ending is as closed as a neo-con's mind, and a lot more formidable. Few Hollywood films have ever brandished such an un-Hollywood climax. Sure, it comes out of nowhere, seems out of character and feels like a bit of a cheat, but what bravado. Yet is it worth the trek to get there? My humble suggestion: Watch The Mist backward and leave early.