The Mist (2007): B
Sunday, March 23, 2008
My plan this evening was to re-watch some of The Mist on DVD before going to bed, a foolish plan in retrospect, my now being unwilling to go to sleep and instead writing about the film that scared me a great deal the first time around. It impressed me to an extent when I saw it theatrically, the majority of my praises and complaints stronger upon second viewing. More so than ever, I want to love the film, but its weaknesses stem it from achieving the greatness is flirts with, their being easy to distinguish from the strengths yet impossible to avoid in overall consideration. Whether or not a "negative" trait negates the effect of a positive one is a possibility that hinges on countless particulars: what's good and bad, in what film, to what purpose, when, and how? (And that's just for starters.) In the case of The Mist, the weaknesses are concentrated/isolated enough to fail in affecting the rest of the film; they stick out like a sore thumb, but at least they only do so in relatively small portions.
Frank Darabont has fashioned one hell of a B movie, once removed from the wondrous goofiness of 50's films such as The Deadly Mantis by way of Stephen King's unfathomably inventive and demented mind (I can't yet call myself a fan of the writer, but his insight is often illuminating and smart, and his stories nifty and enticing enough that I've never been able to ignore one after picking it up). After a particularly strong storm ravages a small town, an inexplicable fog envelopes as far as can be seen, soon revealed to contain numerous otherworldly creatures in its midst, the majority of which are larger and/or deadlier than the terrified citizens now holed up at the local supermarket. It's a premise that screams cheese but Darabont, embracing monster movie conventions with the utmost seriousness, makes it work not unlike an ethereal and unrelenting nightmare, spiritually unhinged and physically brutal with every disgusting manner in which the people are disposed of by the newfound creatures, including lizards, spiders, tentacles, and plenty other things creepy crawly in nature that bite, rip, tear, snap, and explode from within. If nothing else, credit the film for having me embarrass the hell out of myself on initial viewing, the scariest moment in any 2007 film eliciting a few choice words from my involuntary mouth (I believe the phrase used was "holy fucking shit") while my rear elevated several inches (I don't mind bugs much but I do big ones, thanks in large part to a particularly damaging encounter I had as a child with a centipede).
As far as storytelling virtuosity goes, Darabont knows his stuff, but, like his previous films, The Mist comes undone in its attempts at thematic importance, a quality that, here, is likely manifest of both Stephen King's original story (unread by me) and the director's heavy-handed modes of expression. As their fellows are dismantled and eaten one by one, the supermarket survivors begin to think their suffering the wrath of God, swayed by the rantings of Marcia Gay Harden's end-of-days preaching religious zealot, a character so shrill and one-note that she practically brings the film to a halt whenever she spews her religious intolerance. The Mist examines man's inhumanity to man as if the topic were fresh news, it's simplistic approach to allegory self-defeating in its black-and-whiteness (in other words, the harder it tries, the less it sells).
(Major spoilers ahead.) As a monster movie rooted in implicit moral values and tangible communal relationships, The Mist rocks, hitting some particularly devastating notes when the final scenes see our key protagonists navigating their former residences now shrouded in the mist, the bleached-out imagery, such as the white mist atop white insect cocoons shrouding deceased loves ones, proving deeply unsettling and unearthly when complimented by the organic tones of the already disquieting "The Host Of Seraphim". Truly, these passages evoke a feeling of absolute nothingness, the end of the world, and had the film sent us on our way as King did in his story—clinging to hope amidst the unknown, the survivors continue their search for a clearing, for anything—it may have proven great even despite its former flaws. Instead, the final five minutes suggests the kind of thuddingly literal conclusion demanded by an unsatisfied test audience (probably the same people who can't grasp the resounding spiritual closure of No Country for Old Men), providing literal finality at the expense of thematic and character consistency, a broad stroke of nihilism with little purpose other than providing a final blow of suckitude (see Ryland Walker Knight's great piece at The House for his thoughts, which align with mine but are stronger in terms of the picture's scope). A great achievement in many ways, Darabont's biggest misstep is his final submission to the road more traveled, as if the film itself feared its inevitable conclusion and veered off into banality. My quibbles with its attempts at religious study remain but they're muted by the one-two punch of a legitimate (and legitimately profound) scare factor and an excellent cast; had The Mist stayed on course in the final minutes, who knows what we'd have had on our hands. If ever a film needed an alternate cut, this is it, and I can only hope that the YouTube users of the world provide us with what Darabont has not.
Labels: blog reviews
posted by rob humanick @ 9:48 PM,
2 Comments:
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At 5:40 PM,
Stefan Vlahov said...
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Yeah, Darabont is not known for ambiguous endings. Different filmmakers, different styles I guess.
I totally agree with you on this film though. -
At 7:04 PM,
CeeJay329 said...
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Yes!! Thank You! I read the book and just saw the movie and am completley and utterly shocked at the ending. If they had stuck to the book this film would have been awesome. Darabont apparently didn't give two sh*ts about the actual movie or book and decided to just force out a real "shocker" just to leave an impression. Well it did, a terible, disgusted and extremley dissapointed impression.
