Thomas Jane and Nathan Gamble in STEPHEN KING'S THE MIST (2007).
© Dimension Films
Mania Grade: B
Maniac Grade: C+
Reviewed Format: Theatrical Release
Rated: R
Stars: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Andre Braugher, Laurie Holden, Toby Jones, Jeffrey DeMunn, Frances Sternhagen, Nathan Gamble
Writer: Frank Darabont, based on the novella by Stephen King
Director: Frank Darabont
Distributor: M-G-M/Dimension Films
Maniac Grade: C+
Reviewed Format: Theatrical Release
Rated: R
Stars: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Andre Braugher, Laurie Holden, Toby Jones, Jeffrey DeMunn, Frances Sternhagen, Nathan Gamble
Writer: Frank Darabont, based on the novella by Stephen King
Director: Frank Darabont
Distributor: M-G-M/Dimension Films
THE MIST
By: Abbie BernsteinReview Date: Saturday, November 24, 2007
If you’ve read Stephen King’s novella The Mist, chances are you remember it – it has a way of sticking with you, as it showcases King’s mingling of the mundane and the horrific in stellar ways. Director/screenwriter Frank Darabont has now brought it to the screen in an adaptation that pretty faithfully reproduces the tone and a lot of set-pieces, though his elaboration on the ending is likely to produce passionate arguments.
Movie poster painter David Drayton (Thomas Jane) – whose work seems to include some very familiar-to-horror-fans art – leaves his lovely wife at their lakeside house in Maine when he takes young son Billy (Nathan Gamble) on what’s meant to be a short run to the nearby supermarket. While they’re inside the store, an extraordinarily thick mist comes up and surrounds the place, trapping shoppers and employees alike. Then a man comes running in from the parking lot, screaming that his friend has been killed by something in the mist, and every form of human crisis behavior – from altruism to denial to panic to psychotic opportunism – starts to rise. Things get worse when it’s discovered that yes, there really are multiple things in the mist, and when one of the shoppers, a born-again zealot called Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) keeps insisting that this is a sign of God’s judgment.
Harden and Darabont do a terrific job of keeping Mrs. Carmody recognizable as a thinking, feeling person while at the same time making a good case that she’s a lot scarier than the big things going bump out in the night. The monsters designed by Greg Nicotero, Darrell Pritchett and Everett Burrell are enough to make a fan weep for joy – variously insect-like, arachnid, prehistoric and Piscean, you get the feeling that they are exactly what H.P. Lovecraft was talking about in his tales of the Old Ones. There are some very creepy moments coming from both the creatures and Carmody, meshing together the terrors of the bizarre and the mundane.
Jane is excellent as the Everyman hero who becomes a fighter in spite of himself, and there’s fine support from young Gamble and Laurie Holden, Andre Braugher, Toby Jones, Jeffrey DeMunn, Frances Sternhagen, William Sadler and a generally strong cast.
Where the film version of The Mist may go off the rails for some is in its conclusion. Darabont seems to be trying to make a point that hasn’t been led up to by what has come before, resulting (for this viewer, anyway) in distracting analysis that detracts from the intense and satisfying experience that has preceded it, but some may well applaud a finale that is certainly unexpected and uncommon.
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