Movie Review: The Mist

6/10

Ah.. horror movies, how patchy I find ye!

The last horror movie I saw was the frankly risible John Carpenter's Vampires, so you may be forgiven for thinking that the choice to see one based on a Stephen King story that isn't The Shining smacks of madness.

After all, how many decent films are there based on the Proto-Marenghi's works? Er...

Well, I will now say "At least one - The Mist" (which, stupidly, I keep typing as The Moist).

It's a super low budget (the cgi suffers most) picture in which a random group of people get trapped in the supermarket while all hell breaks loose outside.

Interesting factoid a quick search revealed is that Frank Darabont, who adapts and directs, wanted the picture to be in black and white (available on the DvD), and I think that would have worked better taking into account the budgets than the colour version I saw.

It's impossible to talk about why the film is good without spoilers so just give it a chance. While it's nothing particularly original in concept or execution at the beginning, it goes on to raise a couple of very interesting points. It also boasts a rare truly bleak ending, although the following further twist is unnecessary and cheapens the immediately preceding events.

To quote a music reviewer when faced with Scott Walker's The Drift, "none more bleak".

There is a turning point when the film changes from the by the numbers Eight Legged Freaks remake it starts out as into something more, and it is the point at which, spared death for some unknown reason, one of the characters begins to see themselves as a messiah of sorts.

Point One: How fast does society break down? Clunky dialogue pointing the fact aside, the barrier between social sanity and social madness is very thin. In this case rather than descending quickly into tribalism (Lord Of The Flies), Science vs Military solutions (Day Of The Dead) or a sort of secular economic competition (Land Of The Dead) the inhabitants of our little small town supermarket become enraptured by a previously despised and mocked Bile bashing loony who sees the bug invasion variously as judgement day, a call for sacrifices and the payment for scientific sin. She's the one who thinks she's the second coming.

It's all too believable sadly, as she quickly gains weight in the light of supernatural events to become nothign short of an evil prophet, and like all such she first and foremost places herself as the sole messenger of God. A scary thought.

Point Two is the big one - the choice of ending director and writer Frank Darabont decided to include.

In one very moving moment much earlier, our main protagonist is made to promise (his extra special, best promise) by his son that he will never, ever let the monsters get him. The sad consequence of this is that eventually, when all hope is lost he is faced with living up to his promise and going through with the only option. That he does really is brave on the part of the filmmakers, and it's unfortunate that they deemed it necessary to then poop on the poor guy even more by having, at that moment, the immediate and very fast revelation coming that the bugs have been defeated and he didn't need to go through with it after all.

I mean, it deepens the tragedy, but why bother? Why not leave it open ended? This seemed a strange and gimmicky choice given the fact the film had the guts to follow its logic through up to that point. This decision has cost it the 7/10 I was going to give it and it now gets a 6.

Still a good film though.

A