The Mist

The third of Frank Darabont's big screen Stephen King adaptations, "The Mist" reminds the viewer of the visceral power that King and Darabont can create together. A group of people are caught in a supermarket by a mysterious mist, and evil lurks both outside and inside. With perhaps the most sucker-punching, devastating end to a film I've ever seen, I recommend this film to anyone who wishes to see a true horror film.

David Drayton (Thomas Jane) goes to his local supermarket with his son, and whilst they encounter their town’s varying people in-store, a mysterious mist envelopes the air outside, with people running in, telling tales of the horror out there. Trapped together inside, the townspeople realise that the horror outside is nothing compared to the horror they will face from each other...

The performances in this film are fantastic; and being a King story and a Darabont film,they are incredibly well portrayed characters. Thomas Jane's heroic David shows us the everyman who is flawed but simply faces an unimaginable situation to get his son to safety, whilst Marcia Gay Harden creates a portrayal of pure, fundamentalist evil as the nutcase Ms. Carmody. As I've already mentioned, Thomas Jane shows that he can indeed act with the best of them, and his performance as a normal man in an extraordinary situation is incredibly good. Marcia Gay Harden is perhaps the stand out actress (or actor) in this film. Once the mist falls, and incidents involving certain people begin to occur, her Christian extremism comes to the fore, and the real, chilling horror of this movie is seen through her machinations and actions. It is alarming to think that one actress can alienate so many people watching a film, but those whom I have seen this film with have all felt great anger towards her! She is one of the main reasons why anyone should watch this movie.

The other female co-stars do well to portray themselves as more than one-dimensional; another strength of Darabont's. The old school teacher proves that she is not the poor old lady that she looks to be, and the other women, particularly Laurie Holden's character (the woman that befriends David and his son) bring a depth and variety to this enclosed environment that makes it all the more effective. What I have said about the female co-stars extends to the males, but here there were more I recognised! Toby Jones as Olly the supermarketbagboy is a revelation, his straight-thinking and smart remarks throughout making him one of my more favoured characters within the movie. William Sadler's character, a mechanic who seems to constantly need to assert his masculinity but is just as disturbed as the others within the market, is also a performance to watch and enjoy, particularly the story arc that his character takes throughout the course of the film.

On such a small budget, Frank Darabont has managed to make a film that belies its shortcomings. The story, characterisation and effects combine to make "The Mist" superior to any horror film of the past few years. Having already made two King adaptations ("The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile"), Darabont has chosen to take a route towards King's strengths in horror, and has succeeded in making his third adaptation just as fantastic as the two previous to it. His experience in filming "The Shield" has obviously informed his direction here, as the almost documentary feel of many of the scenes here create a more tense atmosphere, but Darabont still knows how to portray an epic and breathtaking scene; the best example of this being THAT concluding scene, which in my mind is on a par with the escape scene in "Shawshank" and the walk along the jail at the conclusion of "Mile". What is most striking is the gallows humour and comedy that runs through such a bleak movie. Jones' character Olly has the best lines, one reference to Sesame Street raising an unexpected laugh at one dark point in the movie! The confusion and disbelief is conveyed through the conversations here too.

As you probably realise, the mist contains "things". I don't really want to say what exactly, but portraying such "things", particularly in regards to where they have come from, was a hard task from the start, and so the iffy CG can be excused. More practical effects could have been used, but in all honesty, on such a small budget Darabont has created enough to fulfill his aims here. As a horror film, the movie's strength lies in its scares, and so the violence features highest here. There is no sex at all, which is good considering the situation within the film, and besides, there is no need for it here. The language and general rudeness is no more than your average 15 rated film, but it is a very grim and gross movie.

This is, in all fairness, one of the best horror movies I’ve seen, and I don’t usually like them. ‘The Mist’ however is actually far more than a horror movie, and I think that’s where its success lies really. The human drama, and human horrors, are the frightening things, and what comes out of the mist only serves to complement and accentuate how people can be more frightening than even the unknown, given the right situation.
8/10