Play Misty For Me

The Mist (2007)

This is a bit unusual in that it's a movie that's not among my favorites, for a number of reasons, but still interesting on a purely conceptual level and, in some ways, in terms of execution. Kind of like Event Horizon. I like the idea, basically, and sometimes the movie does it well enough that I can sit through the annoying parts.

Based on a novella by Stephen King and directed by The Shawshank Redemption's Frank Darabont, The Mist opens with, as might be expected, a dense mist descending on the small town of Bridgton, Maine -- a nonfictional town, though Castle Rock, one of King's favorite fictional locations, is mentioned. Artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane), his son Billy (some kid) and his unfriendly neighbor Brent Norton (Homicide's Andre Braugher) take a trip to the local supermarket to pick up some supplies and find themselves trapped inside as the mist creeps far enough inland to envelope the entire store, with out-of-towner Dan Miller (Jeffrey DeMunn, who's probably remembered these days as Dale from The Walking Dead) running ahead of it screaming about something dangerous in the fog. Maybe something alive.

Tensions start to rise as the shoppers debate whether to venture out into the mist and see what's up with it. Then the shit hits the fan when David, Norm the bag boy and a few local assholes go to check the generator in the loading dock and Norm gets eaten alive by a bunch of spiny tentacles that reach in from outside and rip off his skin. It's pretty unpleasant. Nobody in the store believes them, so Brent, in an idiotic attempt to prove David wrong, heads outside with a rope tied around his waist and ends up getting bitten in half by something. That pretty much sets the powder keg off and pits everyone in the store against each other as they prepare for nightfall and the new horrors that come with it. There are a few other people of note -- a trio of soldiers from the nearby Arrowhead Base, who seem to be keeping a secret, and the awful Mrs. Carmody, a religious zealot deeply devoted to an extremely bloodthirsty Old Testament God, whose preaching goes from annoying to dangerous as the people trapped in the supermarket grow more frightened and more susceptible to her influence.

It's a good story and it's been influencing other writers for a long time. The first computer game based on the novella was released in 1985, and Silent Hill has a number of similarities (the all-encompassing mist being the most obvious). The groundbreaking video game Half-Life was directly influenced by the novella. There's even an episode of Ultraman based on it. Both the novella and the film are deeply cynical, and none of these people are likable. The only people you don't want to see mauled by tentacles are Ollie the assistant manager (Toby Jones, who at the time was in every movie released for about five years) and Irene Reppler, the badass old lady who beans Mrs. Carmody in the head with a can of peas. The irrational tensions, the eventual willingness to participate in human sacrifice to appease the monsters in the mist, all this is basically the point of the story: that people are dumb and panicky and dangerous, and if you put more than two of them in a room for a few days, they'll start thinking of ways to kill each other. It wouldn't be quite as frustrating if it weren't true. At least in this movie it's intentional. Most movies want you to like their shitty people, or at least to sympathize with them. They constantly ignore the obvious. Seriously, half the deaths in the movie could have been averted if they'd just duct-taped Mrs. Carmody's mouth shut, tied her up and tossed her in the storage room at the start.

I do like the monsters here, and how they're handled. There are all sorts of creatures, from giant crabs to skinless pterodactyls to dog-sized spiders that shoot acidic webs. Eventually you're sort of looking forward to seeing what horrifying death the next monster will inflict on these hapless jerks. What's interesting is that as easy as it would be to portray a tentacled horror hundreds of feet tall, large enough to leave road-width footprints in its wake, as some kind of Lovecraftian thing from beyond space, the creatures here are all just animals. Animals from a different place, and by all evidence a much less pleasant place, but they're still part of a natural order. Sure, the pink four-winged pterodactyl thing takes out a few shoppers during its rampage, but it's just going after the giant poisonous bugs attracted by the store's floodlights. It's how I imagine things would go if one drastically different ecosystem began to impose itself upon another one.

One last thing that makes The Mist noteworthy is the ending. It differs quite a bit from King's original, which I liked better, but I have to admire the sheer, unexpected cruelty of the movie's ending. It might be the least happy ending I've ever seen. Most horror movies can't resist having the slasher survive, or having the characters doomed after all, even when it makes no sense whatsoever...but The Mist sticks the knife in and just twists it, and I have to give it a few points for that. There's also a director's cut in black and white, which is probably the best way to watch this.

Available On: Amazon Prime.