The Mist

I get misty and eaten by bugs

2007

Review: December 7, 2007

Director: Frank Darabont

Starring: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Frances Sternhagen

You bet!

THE SETUP:

Town gets suffused with mist, really bad things happen.

DISCUSSION:

So it’s one of those Sundays, the first snow of the year, and this was my “get out of the house” in the afternoon choice. I was looking forward to it, though, as opposed to other Sunday “get out of the house” selections, such as 30 Days of Night, which turn out to be more depressing than staying home with nothing to do.

Okay, I’m on the A train riding home now and… something smells like raw pumpkin. I found a woman’s inch-long red fingernail on the way down. It’s only a few days, obviously, before I find a severed head tucked neatly under the seat. Well, if you see something, say something.

Anyway, so the movie opens with a big storm in Maine, the biggest on record, and David Drayton and family get a tree through their living room window. David is a movie poster artist and, in fact, did the movie poster for John Carpenter’s The Thing. Or at least that’s what we’re meant to believe. All of his art is rather similar, a shadowy figure lurking in a backlit doorway. Could this have something to do with the movie?

So it turns out that the dead tree belonging to their neighbor, Mr. Norton, who there has been some acrimony with, fell on and smushed their boathouse. In here we’re also meeting the wife and 8-year-old son, Billy. David talks to Norton, whose Mercedes has been ruined, and offers him a ride into town. Oh, and this time they notice a thick mist coming off the mountains across the lake. Did old Mrs. Cherdigger leave her humidifier on AGAIN?

So they go to the grocery store, which is packed with people buying supplies because the storm knocked out the power, and all of a sudden a guy runs in with a bloody nose. He says his son was snatched away by something in the mist. Also on hand are Marcia Gay Harden, Toby Jones, and Frances Sternhagen—woah, strong cast! There are also a bunch of military guys around, from the base up around… you know, wherever military bases usually are.

So the mist envelops the town. This is kind of like a disaster movie in that you take some time getting to know your race, age, religion and sex-diverse cast, getting a sense of their various simmering tensions. The first concerns a woman with cancer-victim hair [Sorry, I don’t mean to be insensitive. Cancer-SURVIVOR hair] who left her baby at home in the care of her 8-year-old who has a history of forgetting to mind the boy. She throws all sorts of shade at the others for refusing to go with her, and you want them to say “Sorry, are WE the bad mothers who leave their infants in the care of pre-adolescents?” Between the woman’s hair and her child-care techniques, we have some evidence of a tendency toward poor decision making. She wanders off and is never heard from again.

Then David [the rather attractive Thomas Jane, of Deep Blue Sea and The Punisher] goes in the back and hears an odd noise, then comes and gets three yokels, who immediately start in on how he thinks he knows everything cuz he’s rich and draws art and stuff. It reminded me of Idiotocracy! So they overrule him and send the bag boy out to clear the vent for the generator or whatnot and find themselves confronted with a bunch of nasty tentacles. They look like sweet, innocent tentacles, but then they split open to reveal long teeth and mouths. Not nice. Bag boy killed, little bit of tentacle snipped off.

Then they have to come out and try to convince people, namely Mr. Norton, but he thinks it’s all a joke and it reopens all the old personal grievances, and you, who have heard that the main problem with this movie is it’s too long, start to think “Hello? Why don’t they just SHOW him the tentacle lying on the floor in the back?” Then Marcia Gay Harden is in back praying for the strength to covert people. The kindly blonde offers her the hand of friendship, but Marcia says “The day I need a friend like you, I’ll just have a little squat and shit one out.” Ow!

Now, much as I’d love to discuss the rest, there are so many little surprises that I think it’s best you experience them on your own. I will call out a few particularly good moments, like when a little bug appears outside, seemingly the size of a cricket, but suddenly you see that it was about four feet away, and is actually two feet long! The movie is very good at coming up with little unexpected moments like that, or having people react in ways you wouldn’t see coming, and that goes a long way toward keeping us on our toes.

SPOILERS > > >
So soon a large part of the conflict revolves around the many people Marcia has converted, and how they start to turn on the more level-headed, i.e. our heroes. The demons outside, the ones inside, etc. This will be either satisfying or further evidence of The War on Christians, depending on your politics. I have to say that the explanation for the mist and its attendant creatures was a little disappointingly mundane. The whole movie is building its case for them to be the manifestation of something inside us made real, but then it goes in a boringly straightforward direction. The ending is so downbeat I KNOW Frank Darabont had to blow at least 10 executives to get that one through. But the movie didn’t necessarily need it—it’s not that devastating a payoff, in terms of resonance throughout the movie, and I’m sure it’s largely responsible for the not-exactly-wildfire showing of this movie at the box office.
< < < SPOILERS END

So overall, a very good little monster thriller with a lot of surprises in store. There were scenes I felt like the script was spinning its wheels, but not too many, and I didn’t feel it went on unnecessarily long. This would be a fun little Jurassic Park-style thriller for kids if it weren’t so gory. Anyway, if a clever little monster story sounds like just the ticket in these troubled times, I say go for it.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

Yes, it’s a scary and clever little monster movie.