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The Mist
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An adaptation from a work of Stephen King is, for me, always something exciting to look out for. It is however not always something to be excited about. My excitement mostly comes from if it will be any good, because when it comes to King adaptations, it can go into every direction; from excruciatingly bad to the most brilliant masterpieces of film and every degree in between.
There’ve been some brilliant adaptations like ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, ‘Misery’, ‘The Dead Zone’, to the superior mini-series ‘The Stand’. Some bad adaptations, but brilliant movies on itself like Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’. And some really bad movies in every way like King’s own ‘Maximum Overdrive’. Last years have also seen another bad adaptation and movie by a highly regarded ensemble director, namely Lawrence Kasdan with ‘Dreamcatcher’. And recently we got the entertaining ‘1408’, which was a good ride, but still wasn’t all that great, considering the talent involved in the movie. It had its fair share of good moments, but didn’t really hang together all that well and wasn’t really the impressive King adaptation that it wanted to be.
Now we have yet another adaptation from a story of King, made by a director who knows how to handle King’s work. With two other works from King (actually three if you count his short debut ‘Woman in the Room’ from 1983) behind him; ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ in 1994 and ‘The Green Mile’ in 1999, in which the former is widely regarded as one of the best movies ever made. Flopped in the States, which explains the European delay, this isn’t only one of the best King adaptations in years, one of the best adaptations of his work ever!
The story is quite simple, there’s a mist coming to a small town. Artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane in his best and most mature performance) takes his son and neighbor with him to the local store. When in the store, the mist really kicks in and somebody is suddenly coming out it and heading for the store and yelling that there’s something in the mist. From then on we find most of the movie taking place in that store.
To explain why the adaptations of Frank Darabont work so amazing is quite simple; he adds humanity! While ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and ‘The Green Mile’ were mostly prison-bases drama films -this a horror movie through and trough. But for Darabont this doesn’t mean an excuse to show disposable characters, cheesy plotting and bad dialogue. It’s the utter opposite of that. Sure the movie has its bleeding heart in the good old B-movie roots, sure it has some graphic effects, and some CG effects even look not all that realistic. But what he always does so well in movies and also with this one is he gives us characters we care about with real and believable emotions. The reason for flopping may be partially given to the fact that it fuses some very different genres into one movie that a lot of people find maybe ‘too difficult’; it is a character driven drama, a political and social character study, a bug-movie and a graphic bloody horror film all at once. Add to this a really shocking and devastating ending, which wasn’t even in the book and you have a real daring film, but also a film which will mostly not work for the masses. Though, one hope, ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ also flopped in theatres, but got an insane amount of video-rentals and is now one of the ultimate movie classics. ‘Luckily’ he didn’t push for his initial black and white version to be shown at theatres, then there would have been even less of an audience then there already was. Though, I’ve seen some of it on DVD and it looks and works great with this movie, especially because it is so grounded in the kind of 50’s style of monster movies. Speaking of monsters, they look great. First we get a Lovecraftian tentacle, as a kind of introduction to the monster hysteria. Then we get some big bugs later, and the monsters get bigger and more prehistoric as the movie gets near the end. We also get a good view of people and how they react in extreme conditions. There’s a great part for Marcia Gay Harden were she plays a religious nut bag, and eventually make the people turn onto each other. You’re really going to wonder if inside the store is really better then outside. In this store we get the contemporary world seen through a microscope. It’s really the human doings and emotions that make this far superior then your average horror fare. Also, Darabont is the master of the closed drama; ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, one prison; ‘The Green Mile’, most of its three-hour running time in one cell block. Now with ‘The Mist’ we find ourselves most of it’s duration in one local store. It’s really his craftsmanship that makes his movies work so well. But we also have to thank Stephen King of course; most of the material in the movie comes straight from the book. Since the book is from 1980, it was really clever written, all the politics still applies. In the movie we can feel some of the material is now directed at the Bush administration.
But this is most of all a fantastical horror movie with a lot of emotion. It’s probably Darabont’s most ambitious film to date and really feel sad it did so badly in the States. This movie uses some known territory to create some unknown territories. Combining human drama with a bug movie; if you come to see another ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ you will be disappointed and be irritated by the bugs. When you want to see a really bloody horror film or bug-movie, you may be disappointed by all the talking and human drama. But if you’re not going to see it, you’ll miss the chance of seeing one of the best movies of the year and it will be your loss!
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