“It appears we may have a problem of some magnitude here.”
Frank Darabont has directed and written the screenplays for The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile: two of the most critically acclaimed Stephen King movies to date. Not a small feat, considering that the bulk of the man's body of work is associated with sex and scares. Mr. Darabont knows how to play with drama and pathos, but does the man know what he's doing when it comes to tentacles and terror? That's what I aim to find out with his latest King adaptation: The Mist.
David Drayton (Tom “The Punisher” Jane) is awesome. How do I know he's awesome? The guy has the poster art for John Carpenter's best movie (The Thing in case you were wondering) framed and hanging on his wall. Not a poster, but the poster art. I rest my case. Dave paints movie posters for studios... not that movie studios ever make interesting posters anymore anyway. In fact, when we first meet him, he's painting a picture of The Man With No Name... in Middle Earth... or in the Dreamscape... or some fairyland place where big stone slabs float in the air and roses grow eight times their normal size. Maybe it’s supposed to be a teaser for The Dark Tower? Whatever the case, Dave lives in a sleepy coastal township (because EVERY Stephen King story takes place in a sleepy coastal township) with his plain-but-cute wife Stephanie and their precocious son Billy. The day after a record breaking storm fucks up their cabbage patch and knocks out all the power and phone lines, an ominous mist (yes, we have a movie title!) starts to roll into the area off of a nearby mountain. At the same time, troops from the local military base (which happens to be located in said mountain range) seem to be out in full force... or running like Hell from something.
While Dave, Billy, and their neighbor Brent are in town amassing supplies (like everybody else in the area), somebody decided to pinch a squat over their 3-speed oscillating Air Monster, because the shit hits the fan as air raid sirens blare and an old guy runs manically into the crowded grocery store ranting “SOMETHING IN THE MIST TOOK JOHN LEE!”. The crowd of consumers locks the doors and ready themselves to freak the fuck out as the deadly water vapor swarms over the town. One man says it's probably a chemical cloud from an industrial accident. One woman simply calls it “Death”. Whether either one is right or wrong on the subject, one thing is soon made sure: there are enough hideous Lovecraftian horrors going on in that cloud of doom to give every last Navy SEAL (“Oooooo, Navy SEALS!”) night terrors for the rest of their lives!
Of course the theme of the movie isn't really ghastly horrors that live in an evil cloud, but the human drama that plays out when thirty or so panicked individuals are trapped in an enclosed space together with no idea of what's going on outside said space, especially in regards to their loved ones. Do they keep a cool head and evolve as the situation requires, or do they flip shit and crack each other's heads open so they can feast on the gooey mush within? Do they gather behind a leader or leaders and become a team, or does “love thy neighbor” turn into “fuck you, I've got my own ass to worry about!”? How many people will try to outlast the nightmare inside the store and how many will try to escape? Will people put their faith in rational thinking, or freak out and resign their asses to their imaginary friends in the sky? You know what the first thing I'd say to one of those Left Behind tools would be? “Okay, if it's Judgment Day, then how about you get your skinny God fearing ass out there and 'accept your reward'!”, right before booting them through a plate glass window. And every ignorant yokel that wants to go out into the Mist willy-nilly because they think they know everything? More of the same. Good times.
Between the religious paranoids and the idiots in denial, some of these people wear really thin on my patience REALLY quick. I hate people that feed on others' fear and ignorance, but I also hate people who won't accept the reality right in their fucking faces. On the plus side though, if you hate people like that the way I do, you eventually get your payoff for hating them so much and that makes it all worth it. Brent stands with the denial people, and the level of paranoia he leap frogs to in a single bound is borderline infuriating. How is it that you can tell a guy, “Here, I have proof of my insane claim!” and he immediately thinks you’re playing a “joke” on him?! Scared or not, common sense shouldn’t be the first aspect of the human brain to buy a one-way ticket on Shithead Airlines. Whatever the case, the big mystery (aside from who will die and how they’ll do it) is where are these monsters coming from? Are they inter-dimensional aliens looking for conquest? Military experiments gone wrong? Prehistoric creatures mutated by atomic radiation? Did Cthulhu's alarm clock finally go off?! Then again, maybe they really ARE the wrath of a greater power... I ain't tellin'... not that I'm saying I even know... What I do know is that the tentacle cgi is pretty bad. Sci-Fi Channel Original bad? Just about. Fortunately the rest of the computer generated monstrosities aren’t as bad. In fact, once you get a look at some of the bigger beasties, it’s downright humbling. I don't know what to say about the ending though without giving it away. Let's just say that it's pretty fucking ridiculous and leave it at that.
For his part, I think Darabont did a great job. Claustraphobia and fear of the unknown are probably the two most powerful psychological tricks you can infuse into your movie and I think the man both wrote and shot these elements well. The message of the story is never really clear, as it seems to tread both sides of conflicting topics, like which is better: faith or strategy? Is too much tax money given to the military, or should we be supplying them with more? Do the needs of the many really outweigh the needs of the few? Are you better with the devil you know, or the Hell you don’t? Just when you think any one of these quandaries is answered, you see a shift back toward the opposite direction! I liked it. Sure, there are the usual logic farts that make you go, “Wha?!”, but I think there’s also a lot of good done here… just not those stupid cgi tentacles. It’s called “color correction” people, look it up!
Casting wise, I couldn’t have been happier. Marsha Gay Harden is perfectly infuriating as the resident Bible thumping lunatic hate monger. I just wish she were hot so I could make a joke about how “she's so hot that she could make a gay harden”. Oh well, ya can’t get everything you want. Frances Sternhagen kicks ass as the “take no shit” old lady that likes to put the bitchy Bible beater in her place. William Sadler was also great as the mood swinging Jim, who covers pretty much all of the emotional and mental bases between Point A and Point B for his role in everything. I was really surprised by Sam Witwer though. He seemed like nothing at first, and for a good part of the movie that’s all he was. But, when he gets his one big dramatic scene, I got the proverbial chills watching him. Otherwise the guy just looks like a complete ass cake, but for those few brief minutes, wow. If putting this on his resume doesn’t get him more work, Hollywood sucks. I wasn’t greatly impressed by Tom Jane. He seemed outdone by much of the rest of the cast for a lot of the movie, putting a little too much of a (apologies in advance) Plain Jane routine part of the time and seemed to struggle in conveying raw emotional scenes at the same time.
Tom Jane is cool though. I used to work for a big deal comic book dealership and the man came in one day to talk four colors with the owners. He was there for a good 5 or 6 hours shootin' the shit about his lifelong love of old horror books from the days of EC (infamous for “Tales From the Crypt”, “Vault of Horror”, and a dozen other great Golden Age titles), his current collaborations with writer Steve Niles (creator of “30 Days of Night”), and how he tried his best to make The Punisher work even though he wasn't the best pick for someone to play Frank Castle. If you haven't seen his flick Stander yet, do so because it's a great heist flick. The guy's always good for signing autographs, he is/was co-writing a groovy outer space horror comic called “Bad Planet”, and he's the model for Steve Niles's coolest character: Cal McDonald! What's not to like? Speaking of which, when the fuck is there going to be a Cal McDonald movie?! Didn't 30 Days of Night make enough money to put something like that into motion yet?
