SPOILER WARNING. Real, straight-out spoilers this time. So if you haven't seen the movie, don't read this, even if you've read the book--certain additions and changes are most definitely blown below.

So, The Mist. I went with it all the way till the end, until I got so mad that the dumb fucking studio fucking spoiled the fucking ending in the fucking COMMERCIALS (soldiers in hazmat suits using flamethrowers, um, HELLO) that I basically stormed off in disgust. It was only in the cold light of this disillusionment that I realized the movie wasn't scary at all. Gross, sure, and intense in its gore, but never frightening, not even boo-scary. Maybe that last is because if you've read the novella, you know pretty much every major monster beat, with the exception of one new addition that's such a flagrant Aliens rip-off that you know what's coming anyway. The one thing that really succeeds on horror terms is the creature design, which takes a lot of the critters in directions that are both entirely faithful to the book and totally not what I would have expected, from the almost centipede-like tentacles to the death's-head faces of all the insectoid beasts to blowing up the unseen lobster-monsters to King Kong size to shrinking the giant monster that walks over the jeep at the end but making it this creepy cthuloid mess that you can actually see rather than just a few giant legs that trail off into the stratosphere. But, and I stress, while some of this is cool, none of this is actually frightening, and horror movies should be scary. So, fail.

Ditto Mrs. Carmody. Never the most nuanced depiction of religious fundamentalism, she works in the novella because--well, because I read it for the first time when I was in 7th grade, probably. But let's be generous and say she works because of the deliberate, lurid, pulpy quality that was King's stated aim with the piece. By casting the younger, thinner, less central-casting Marcia Gay Harden, they had a chance to do something really precise and nasty regarding the apocalyptic fervor that lies beneath your garden-variety evangelical, but instead she chews the scenery like Elmer Gantry with the occasional "hi I'm actually a nutball" tic thrown in for seasoning. (I found her oddly sexy, though. I actually think this was a deliberate move on the movie's part--as time passes and she exerts more influence on the survivors, her hair comes down and her behavior gets more and more passionate.) Tom Jane's star turn as David Drayton, the lead, is hit and miss. His tough-guy act feels like just that, but he's oddly excellent at conveying grief and horror. The supporting cast shines, though, I'll give the movie that. Andre Braugher is just perfect as Brent Norton, better than the character is in the book; I didn't see the racial subtext coming at all, and he played it brilliantly. Toby Jones' Ollie is precisely the lovable little guy he's supposed to be, William Sadler's Jim is convincing in his journey from blustery douchebag to repentant would-be good-guy to broke-down cult member, and William DeMunn, who's really given the single most important bit of acting in the whole film as he's the first person we see to really react to what's lurking in the mist, aces the assignment.

It's actually the filmmaking that's the best part of the movie. And I don't mean the CGI, which actually gets a lot better than that opening tentacle salvo (shame they had to lead with the least convincing visuals). Frank Darabont uses jump cuts, zooms, hand-helds, fades, and an extremely judicious application of score to create a ragged, urgent rhythm. In terms of camerawork and editing it's one of the more impressive horror films to come along in quite a while, simply because it's doing stuff I can't remember seeing in a horror film, and doing it pretty well. The best illustration is probably that initial panicked run through the parking lot and into the supermarket by DeMunn, which again is depicted in a way I wouldn't have anticipated from reading the novella yet fits perfectly with its sense of unexplained, impending chaos.

What about the ending, then? I don't have any problem with the mist dissipating and humanity coming out on top, since I'm actually pretty fascinated with the idea of apocalypses that end before the world does. Nor do I have a problem with Dave mercy-killing his companions, including his son; this was set up in the book and it's completely believable. And as I mentioned, shock and sadness are handled really well by Jane, who's given an awful lot to sell to the audience in this scene and does it. The problem is just that the ending feels like what it is, which is slapped on. First of all, it cuts the entire affair short--the mist is gone, there's no cryptic radio message from Hartford, perilous journeys to Connecticut, eking out a living with a band of survivors tirelessly searching for a solution, or all the other good stuff that your imagination unfurled before you when you reached the end of the novella. That's that. Secondly and more importantly, we haven't really gotten to know these characters beyond their stock roles. Unlike the comparable units in the first two George Romero Dead movies, for example, none of these five has done anything surprising, nor have they grown and changed from the people we first met, really. They're just there, so this horrible ending that befalls them is just there too. Finally (and I'll admit this just may be where I'm at right now) all the King-fan in-jokes--from the fact that Dave starts the movie painting the poster for a movie of The Dark Tower to Mrs. Carmody's quoting the Trashcan Man's catchphrase to the Castle Rock Gazette on the newsstand to various King idioms and neologisms peppered throughout the dialogue--naturally undercut the movie's effort to earn the seriousness of a quadruple murder/infanticide and attempted suicide-by-monster that turns out to have been completely unnecessary.

Ultimately, I'll just say it's not as good as the book. Sometimes that doesn't mean much. In this case it means a lot.

Posted by Sean T. Collins at 2:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)