The Mist Review

        Since I’ve been talking about Stephen King movies all this month, it only made sense that I talk about Frank Darabont’s only horror adaptation. With the success of both Shawshank and Green Mile, it’s only him and Rob Reiner that have adapted King’s stories the most. I feel as though this one is misunderstood and contemporary in the context of what happened a few years ago. To wrap up my look into Frank Darabont, here’s what I think about The Mist. 

1. Mist over Bridgton

        One thing that I haven’t gone over is Darabont’s past as a writer. Prior to his work as a director, he got started as a screenwriter and horror was up his alley. Both Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and the remake of The Blob were the gems of the 80s. More telling was that he actually wanted to adapt The Mist story before directing The Shawshank Redemption. After the success of the latter, it was the one story where it was put in the backburner as he adapted The Green Mile. 

        Having watched three of his films throughout the month, this one is obviously different. Horror angle aside, it’s clear that the film was shot with a relatively low budget and with how it’s shot reminds me of those police/detective procedural shows. With the camera being active and having those quick zoom ins to whenever someone is talking. Not to say that’s a detriment, but it’s a drastic shift than what’s been established in his prior works. 

        So, we start off in all places in Maine. It wouldn’t be a Stephen King story without the northern most part of the country taking a beating for the sake of storytelling. We see that David is an artist who mostly paints movie posters. I really like the nod to him painting one of King’s other story The Dark Tower. While it got adapted, it wasn’t very good. Anyways, the area encounters a severe storm that knocks out the power. Him and his son enter a supermarket, until an enigmatic mist descends onto the area causing everyone to hunker down. 

This is a different horror movie compared to its contemporaries in the early 2000s. During that time, there was an emphasis on remakes and continual Saw sequels. This is the one movie where it doesn’t follow the usual tropes at the time. It’s the opposite where most of the action is focused on one specific area. More so that there’s a human element at play instead of people being slowly picked off by the monstrous creatures coming from the mist. 

        I’ll talk about the main highlight in a second, but with what the movie is going for, Thomas Jane does a good job as the lead. He’s the only person who acts rational at a moment where everyday life is upended. He builds a small group of the people he can trust to figure out what’s happening. There isn’t so much a bad guy, but we get the obligatory Stephen King religious nut with Mrs. Carmody.

        If there’s one secondary actor that I was surprised to see, it was Sam Witmer. My first exposure to him was through the video game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. His face is so familiar to me, to the point where made an appearance in this film and in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia among other things beyond the Star Wars franchise. While he has a short appearance in this movie, I can at least highlight that he was the outcome of the main threat in the film.

2. The Monsters

        I can imagine that the people who went to see the movie, only wanted to see the monsters. The designs of them are impressive, but sometimes the CGI effects look a tad shoddy. Originally, the film was supposed to be in Black and White, to harken back at the old school horror and the aesthetic was supposed to match what the film was going for. Obviously, the studio heads denied Darabont the request, so he came out with an alternative version that is his preferred vision of the film. Anyways, beyond the bug monsters that we see, the real monsters in the film are the people. 

        I really love the dynamic within the movie where the people act out when things go south. It’s the sort of dread where it’s rare to see people act irrational and do things that ultimately cost them their lives. That’s the main thing that I must commend the movie, we see the people stay in the store and venture out. To highlight just how the event has thrown any or all sense of rational thinking.

        In some way, I think this film is relevant in today’s time. Since we got out of a pandemic, the whole film has that lens where people don’t believe there is a threat and see it as another fatal sign from God. Just seeing Mrs. Carmody build a following and sacrificing Witmer’s character shows just how everything could go wrong when something uproots any sense of normalcy. It reminds me of Lord of the Flies with how people can be tribal and how it can be fatal. 

        I think it’s appropriate to talk about the ending. Aside from other controversial endings like Man of Steel, I think this one had people in sort of a funk where David did a selfless or selfish act, depending on the individual interpretation. To me, it sort of encapsulates what the movie is going for, humans act out and become monsters on their own. Within the context of the film it works, seeing how the bugs wiped out the citizens and a massive one roaming around established that the world they know is gone. 

        Seeing how there’s no hope amongst David, his family, and the survivors, he kills them as an act of mercy to avoid being bug chow. Then in an ironic twist of fate, the mist dissipates, and the military arrives just after David did what he did. I get the feeling where people where roiled when the immediate sequence happened, had he just waited a few moments later. But I think the overall point is that David loses his humanity and becoming part of the thing that he tried to escape. 

 

3. Overall

        Probably the most underrated horror film of the 2000s, The Mist is a hidden gem of the decade and an underappreciated Stephen King adaptation.