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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
 Posted - 05/30/2008 : 8:32:29 PM
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I first heard of Stephen King’s story The Mist when I was around 16 or 17. The novella had been around for a while by then, and a computer game based on the book had just been released (I never played it, so I have no idea how good it was). The next time I heard about it was when I saw a book-on-tape of the story. It was no ordinary audiobook. The company producing it had gone all out and made a radio play, with full sound effects and (if memory serves) a very good cast of actors, including William Sadler and Dann Florek. The radio play was done in 3D sound, meaning you needed to listen to it with headphones on, and you should be able to tell when sound effects were meant to be near or far away, or when something was in front of you or behind you. It didn’t work perfectly, but it was still quite impressive. The only places where it fell flat were during a few action sequences, which by their nature don’t work in radio plays. But it was very well acted, well directed, honestly scary, and (very important) it managed to streamline a 130-page novella down to a 75-minute play without any serious losses. I bought King’s compilation book Skeleton Crew, which had The Mist as its first story, not long after that. After reading it, I was impressed by how close the radio play got to nailing it (although there were a few internal monologues in the novella that plugged up some holes left by the play). Also, I read in Crew’s afterword that King had come up with the idea while shopping on a Saturday morning after a big storm had hit the town. He dreamed up the story as The Alamo meets the Saturday morning creature feature, imagining it as a good B-movie (although the book got pretty dark toward the end).
So, the novella has been a pretty big favorite among fans, and there was always someone wondering when it would become a movie. I myself was waiting for this, but to be honest, given the book’s wide-open ending, I thought it might be a good idea for the first episode of a TV miniseries, or maybe a series pilot.
When it was announced that Frank Darabont was making The Mist, my reaction was “I’m there, dude.” Then the other shoe dropped.
First off, Marcia Gay Harden was cast as the villain. Uh oh. (Nothing against Harden; I’ll go into why she was a bad choice for the villain later on.) Then I started getting word on how this movie played some serious politics. I enjoyed The Shawshank Redemption, but I thought it was overrated. Morgan Freeman was great as always, and there were some truly moving moments. But the villain, Warden Norton, was a one-note bad guy, as was his henchman (though Bob Gunton and Clancy Brown put everything they could into their performances). Also, I got the feeling that some of the movie had been dumbed down a bit from the novella. One critic who didn’t like the film dismissed it as a “warm and fuzzy prison movie.” When I saw The Green Mile, I thought the preaching (regarding the death penalty this time) was more overt, and once again the prisoners were treated as way too warm ‘n’ cuddly. I never saw The Majestic, though I read a few reviews that clued me in that Darabont was sliding more into film-as-sermon territory.
And now this. I read some reviews of The Mist, many positive (and with hindsight, I wonder what some of these people were thinking), and many negative. A lot of the reviews made special mention of Harden’s character, Mrs. Carmody. Both positive and negative views told me one thing: Darabont had used the character of Mrs. Carmody to make a broadside attack on religion. (I’ll give the differences on book and film later on.) One of the more negative reviews, from the New York Post, called the movie a left-wing screed disguised as a horror movie. I find myself more in agreement with that view the more I think of it.
Then I read a negative review where the critic gave his main reason for not liking the movie. He gave a spoiler warning, and then....
Well, I was glad I’d gotten the warning. I’d been backing away from gotta see-it status for a while, but this put me way on the other end, in no way-in-hell territory.
Fast forward to early May. My dad had rented this movie, and he told me I could have it as long as I took it back on time. So I watched It the next day. I didn’t have to pay for it, but.... Well, I’ll repeat what I said in that teaser thread: Holy f---in’ sh!t. This movie didn’t disappoint me. It didn’t offend me. It went past that. I wanted to wring Frank Darabont’s neck after seeing it (something I don’t remember ever wanting to do to a director, no matter how bad the movie). I’d been considering writing a review for Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, but this movie has that film’s problems, multiplied. (I may do WOTW someday; it has plenty of trouble of its own. But it’ll be a long while.)
I took the plunge and rented the movie again so I could dictate my notes and have the details right. Since I took it back early, I was able to get a free rental. Speaking of that free rental, Cloverfield isn’t for everyone, and it has plenty of flaws of its own, but it succeeds in doing just about everything The Mist fails to do.
Two things, before getting into the review proper. First, while the movie is faithful to the book (even in places where it should have been altered), there are differences. Just about every one of those alterations hurt the film. Who wrote the script? Darabont. I’ll go into some of those changes in the review, and yes, I’ll give away a lot of the book, including its ending. If you’ve never read the book and want to, go ahead and read it before reading this (it shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours).
Second, in case you haven’t guessed, politics and religion will figure into the review. While I consider myself a Christian (albeit not a very good one) and a fairly staunch conservative, I have several DVD’s in my collection that take on an atheistic tone or espouse much more liberal points of view than my own. Put simply, I have no problem recommending a movie that may disagree with my beliefs, if it doesn’t treat the viewer like an idiot.
You can guess where this is going, right? From what I’ve read, Darabont had enough clout when making this movie to do what he wanted. So Frankie-boy is the target of tonight’s bludgeoning. Believe me, I’m gonna do some serious bludgeonin’.
Okay, Management is tapping his toe, waiting. Let’s get into it, shall we?
Jabootu calls for repentance! The dark movie god demand’s Frank Darabont’s head on the altar! Expiation! Expiation!
After the studio logo (Dimension Films — the Weinstein brothers, blech!) fades out, we fade up on the study/workroom of our main character (played by Thomas Jane). He’s a commercial artist who apparently specializes in book covers and movie posters. A storm’s brewin’ outside. The power goes out, then we see the main title come up as Our Hero and his wife and young son look out the big picture window to the lake on whose shore Our Hero’s house sits. The storm looks a bit off. It’s funny how we’ve advance so much with computer animation, and yet this shot looks fake, obviously a CG storm, when movies made twenty and thirty years ago were far more convincing. Our Hero and his family make their way down to the cellar, then a big tree comes down, its branches smashing in the picture window.
Fade up to the next morning. Our Hero and his wife go out to survey the damage, and we see the rest of that tree that knocked in the window. They exposit that Our Hero will go to the store to stock up on food before anything in the house goes bad, and he also plans to go to the hardware store to get something to board up the window. The house didn’t take too much damage, and besides, as Our Hero says, “It’s just stuff. We’re safe; that’s all that counts.” Irony Alert! The dialogue here doesn’t quite ring true. Introductions all around: Frank Darabont, Clunky Expo; Clunky E., Frank Darabont. They look at the lake and notice (bum bum BUM) a big fog bank coming off the mountain on the far side, starting to spread over the lake. After commenting on how that is, you know, strange and stuff, they give some more Clunky Expo about Our Hero’s next-door neighbor, Norton (and no, Our Hero isn’t named Ralphy Boy). Their backstory is kinda blah: basically, there’s a lot of bad blood between them, and the movie makes it look like (a) Our Hero was in the right, and (b) Norton hasn’t gotten any sympathy from others. Anyway, Brent Norton’s out there trying to do some repairs of his own. Norton is played by Andre Braugher (Yay!). There’s the expected bit of strained pleasantries between them. Norton clearly doesn’t like Our Hero, but he keeps his resentment under the surface, for now. It’s exposited that he’s a lawyer from New York; this is his vacation home. Norton, whose car was smashed in the storm, asks Our Hero for a ride into town, and we learn Our Hero’s name: David Drayton. (We’ll learn soon enough that his wife’s name is Steff, and his kid’s name is Billy.)
As they drive into town, they notice that some of the radio stations are out, then see some power company trucks on the move (a sight I was quite familiar with in September 2005). Also, several military jeeps go past. David and Norton exposit that there is a military base nearby called The Arrowhead Project, and that no one hear really knows that it’s for. Golly gee, could this be where that mist was coming from? More jeeps rush by, and David notes that they’re in a hurry (for those blind members of the audience).
They get to the supermarket, and David realizes that he can’t get a signal on his cell phone; when he tries to call Steff on a pay phone, he finds that the phone lines are down. (In an expository shot, we see that the drugstore next door to the market has its doors chocked open.) David goes into the market, trading hellos with a pretty young checkout girl named Sally (I’m gonna just call her Checkout Girl; names are very easy to forget in this movie); we learn very little about her, but she’s very young, very pretty, and she babysits for David and Steff on occasion. I smells lunch meat here, I does. She ain’t gonna make it. Checkout Girl notes that the power’s out here, and half the staff are absent, so there’s a bottleneck at the checkout line. She also exposits that there’s a big generator in the back which is keeping the frozen stuff frozen. The banter here just confirms it for me: Checkout Girl’s gonna get herself kilt. David then says hi to Ollie, the assistant manager (played by Toby Jones). Ollie is the classical nerd: short, pudgy, balding, bespectacled, eyes set wide apart, nowhere near a leading man type. I’ll go into Ollie later on; he’ll turn out to be one of the few things this movie comes close to getting right. Ollie sees another lady about town, Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) walk by. He says good morning, and she gives a sour response. Hmmmmmm, I thinks we has our villain, I does. This intro to Mrs. Carmody will be the first of this movie’s many, many missteps.
David and Norton have a quick exchange which suggests they’re trying to bury the hatchet, at least for the time being. It’s one of Andre Braugher’s better acting moments in this movie (and he’ll have very few chances to shine). There are some pseudo-documentary shots of people in the store, then we see three young army guys in their dress greens. They establish they’re to go on leave in about a half hour. Oh, how nice, the youngest of the three looks longingly at Checkout Girl, and she gives him the same look after he passes by. This guy will figure in prominently later on, but we’ll hear his name only briefly. I’ll just call him Soldier Boy.
Next, we’re introduced to Mrs. Reppler (Frances Sternhagen, yay!); I’m gonna call her Nice Older Lady. I will say this: Frances Sternhagen will deliver one of the few multi-faceted performances in the movie (Toby Jones will be another); most of these people will have one dimension, if that, to go with. There’s another lady with short gray hair who will supposedly be an important character, though we get very little info about her (her ultimate fate will be yet another serious screw-up this movie commits). Billy makes a faux pas at Norton’s expense, but Norton’s too distracted to be pissed off. Hmmmmm, there’s a Military Police jeep parked outside. The MP comes in and pulls the army guys aside. Sorry, boys, all leave is cancelled. MP says he’s gonna go to the drugstore to see if there are any more soldiers to collect; he orders the three of them to be outside by the jeep in five minutes. While this is playing out, Nice Older Lady (who is a teacher) complains about how our gubmint spends more on the military than on education, becoming, I suspect, a mouthpiece for Frank Darabont (this bit wasn’t in the novella). This is the first, but not last, bit of political speechmaking this movie will make. Oh, and we see a pretty blonde lady (Laurie Holden) waving hello to David. Clumsy. They don’t know each other, and this is a clunky intro for her.
A couple of police cars and fire trucks speed by, sirens a-wailin’, and the store manager (whom we’ll learn later is named Bud) admonishes Checkout Girl to keep her attention on her work. MP guy leaves for the drugstore... And that’s when the air raid sirens start up. There’s a nice shot of the people in the market freezing and listening to the siren. Then a middle aged man (Jeffrey DeMunn) with a bleeding nose comes running in, shouting, “Something in the mist took John Lee!” then he yells at people to keep the doors shut, which they do. He warns them not to go out there; there’s something in the mist. One guy makes a break for it, running for his car.
There are some very nice shots of the mist descending on the town. We see a slo-mo of the runnin’ guy getting to his car as the mist comes in close and swallows him up. Almost immediately, we hear him screaming in agony. The mist comes over the market, blocking any view out (we can only see for a few feet). Mrs. Carmody whispers, oh so dramatically, “It’s death.”
And that’s when the earthquake hits. Everyone’s knocked to the grounds, and a couple of overhead lights go tumblin’ down, but there’s no serious damage. At this point, we’re fourteen minutes into the film. Up to here, it’s been shot hand-held, documentary style, and it’s been all character, little plot. The dialogue has been a little off, but overall, things haven’t been too bad; it could be a lot worse. And so far, there has been no musical score whatsoever.
Warning! Warning! This is exactly the way War of the Worlds began. Not a good sign, nope.
One lady has kids at home, and she makes noise about how she has to get home to make sure they’re okay. The lady has very short red hair, almost shaved (I think that this is how the actress who played this part keeps her hair in real life; the reason I mention it will be clear in the sickeningly bad finale). Mrs. Carmody goes on about how “It’s death out there! It’s the end of days!” in a low, breathy voice. Everyone around agrees that Redhead Buzzcut Lady shouldn’t go out there until they have some grasp of what’s going on. RBL becomes hysterical, begging the crowd for someone to walk her home. While I could understand people being scared, it’s a little early for hysterics, yes? (Actually, this serves as a warning of how melodramatic this movie’s gonna get.) Anyway, no one’s willing to go with her, so she curses them all and walk out, off into the mist. As she does, we hear the first bit of music in the film, 17 minutes in: a quiet synthesizer drone that’s almost subliminal. I’ll go into the score later on. Billy starts to cry out of fear, and David tries to calm him down, unsuccessfully. Again, it’s early for such dramatics, in my opinion. The novella was meant to take the tone of a B-movie, then morph into the darker, supposedly more serious stuff later on. The movie tips its hand early. Nice one, there, Darabont.
Fade up to sometime later (maybe only ten or fifteen minutes). David and Billy hunker down in an aisle, surrounded by four women: Gray-Haired Lady, Nice Older Lady, Blonde Lady, and Checkout Girl. Okay, Frances Sternhagen doesn’t exactly stir my loins, but I wouldn’t mind being surrounded by the other three (I’m counting Gray-Haired Lady, who's not bad-lookin' at all). Um, question. Why aren’t they helping clean up like everyone else in here? Blonde Lady is introduced as Amanda Dumfries, a new teacher here. Ollie comes in to say hi and let them know that Dan (Jeffrey DeMunn’s character) is calmed down, with a little help from Princess Valium, and that his bleeding’s stopped. David brings up that Billy’s tired, and he needs something to cover Billy up with. This feels pretty contrived, an IITS moment to get David back in the market’s storage area. Anyway, Ollie tells David to go and get some furniture pads from the storage area; they can serve as makeshift blankets. Gray-Haired Lady offers to babysit for Billy while David’s away, and David drapes Billy with his jacket. Again, this makes David’s foray back to the storage room a problem. While it may not be the most comfortable set-up in the world, a five-year-old could do worse than having his dad’s jacket for a blanket and a sweet babysitter’s shoulder to rest his head on.
David starts back for the storage room, and we see Norton in the background trying to act like a leader, working out something to do. He’s taking on a sort of know-it-all attitude. David heads back to the storage room and notices immediately that the generator is kicking up exhaust fumes. He shuts it off, killing the emergency lights, then stumbles around in the dark, in a moment that feels like very badly timed slapstick.
We go back out to the store for a moment, where we see Norton trying to be the rational level-headed guy, and Mrs. Carmody goes by saying it’s “Judgment Day,” while a biker-type guy with a leather jacket and doo-rag on his head laughs her off. But she won’t be swayed. Ah, yes, here we go.
David uses his cell phone as a flashlight (a fairly clever bit), and continues to look around for that furniture pad. Then he hears something scraping around outside the loading dock door. He looks back to see the overhead door bulge in a bit as something pushes against it. Bum bum BUM! Whatever it is starts hitting against the door, apparently trying to get in. David gets spooked and hightails it back into the market. Nope, don’t buy it. In a moment, we’ll see that what’s out there is pretty damn strong. If it wanted to break down that door, chances are, it’d be able to do it (in the book, it was just scraping around, not trying to get in).
David goes out and tells Ollie and two local hicks (that’s about all the characterization they’ll get) named Jim (William Sadler) and Myron (David Jenson) about what he heard. They’re ready to shrug it off, and David starts getting angry at them, in a way that doesn’t endear him to me (he acts a little paranoid). An 18-year-old bagboy, Norm, walks up and joins in the convo. The five of them agree to go back and check out that noise.
Back at the loading dock, they figure out pretty quickly that something must be blocking the generator’s exhaust pipe. Norm tells Jim to crank up the generator for a few seconds and open the overhead door part way, then Norm will go out and clear the pipe. David is obviously against this. Jim more or less talks down to David, saying he’s not convinced that David heard anything, and to tell you the truth, David’s overheated reaction doesn’t impress me. David acts high-handed, and has a near-insulting attitude toward Jim, Myron, and Norm. The argument heats up much too quickly, with Jim getting mad enough to tell David to shut his mouth unless he wants his teeth knocked out. Anyway, since Norm has volunteered, Jim and Myron start up the generator while Norm prepares to go outside. Again, Jim and Myron are supposed to be seen as a couple of dumb yokels, but you gotta remember, they have no idea they’re in a horror movie; in the real world, their plan would be perfectly sensible. They get the genny started, open the door part way, and look outside into the mist. Jim-n-Myron tease David for his skittishness, and Norm looks back to laugh. Bad move, Norm: it’s always when you look away that the monster comes in to— Ah, there it is! Several huge tentacles shoot out of the mist and grab Norm. David and Ollie grab hold of Norm, trying to keep him from getting pulled away. Jim-n-Myron need to look bad, so they back away slowly (though I think a lot of people would be frozen out of shock, so this doesn’t really work). Oh, how nice! The tentacles have claws on them in addition to suckers (a la The Beast), so when they grip Norm then pull away, they tear some flesh offa him. Yes, we get loving close ups of Norm’s knee, and then his chest, getting the flesh torn away and exposing meat and blood. Norm is screamin’ in pain, and.... This is supposed to be a graphic, horrifying moment.
Nope. Tentacles look fake. Extremely fake. They scream CGI and blue screen. Anyway, Norm is dragged away into the mist (but not before we see a loving close-up of his agonized face), and more tentacles start coming in. Ollie rushes back to the generator, starts it up, and hits the button to close the door. The tentacles somehow realize they need to get outta there and pull away, but not before David is able to chop off the tip of one with a fire ax. Jim-n-Myron start to fall all over themselves apologizing for Norm’s death (as opposed to standing there, babbling incoherently, getting out “What WAS that?!”). David lambasts them, telling them Norm’s death was their fault. Jim has the presence of mind to point something out: he thought that David was talking about a dog or bird or something; how was he supposed to know that The Beast’s big brother (or Squidward’s meaner cousin) was outside, lookin’ for breakfast? And he’s right. Never mind. David starts punching Jim out, beating the crap out of him. This is Our Hero?! Myron states (correctly) that they didn’t twist Norm’s arm; Norm volunteered to go out. That doesn’t even slow David down. Ollie finaly gets between them and calms things down. This was where I realized that if there is a real hero in this piece, it’s gonna be nerdy little Ollie, a refreshing surprise. After they calm down, David tells Ollie to turn off the generator (and I caught another problem: the emergency lights are on, but the generator isn’t making any noise or belching up any fumes right now). Jim keeps apologizing, though I repeat that I don’t think you can be too hard on him for this. David (and, I believe, the film) is clearly furious at these two. Knock it off, Dave. Anyway, Dave-n-Ollie send Jim-n-Myron back into the market then have a little tete-a-tete over what the next move is gonna be. Ollie says they have to tell people about this and find a way to make them believe; better to scare them than have them go outside. (I like Ollie a lot more than I like David.) David gives a line that could have been good if it weren’t delivered in such a dour way: “What were those tentacles attached to?!”
They go back out and get with Jim and Myron, trying to figure a way to convince the out-of-towners here that they’re on the level. David thinks of recruiting Norton. We have a bit of Clunky E from the others: the locals think of Norton as a “windbag,” and Ollie notes that Norton’s not just any old lawyer; he’s a high-powered muckety-muck in New York City (New York City?! Git a rope!) who’ll “probably be on the bench one day.” Ollie then brings up that they have a serious problem on their hands: the entire front of the store is plate glass. If something wants to get in through there, it won’t be too hard. This one line of dialogue was far more effective than that whole special effects sequence at the loading dock. Less is more, Frank Darabont.
Anyway, Norton doesn’t believe a word of it, and thinks David’s trying to play a joke on him(!). He brings up the old disputes he and David had, and he even refuses to go back and look at the proof. (A moment ago, David changed shirts, since he had blood on his. Hmmmmmm, David, why not show Norton that bloodied shirt and ask him to explain it?) Having Andre Braugher play Norton was a bit of a double-edged sword. On the plus side, well, hey, he’s Andre frickin’ Braugher! What more can one say? Also, there’s a nice subtle touch: Norton thinks people are against him because he’s “an out-of-towner.” That’s all. No one even thinks about playing the race card here. The downside is, Braugher’s talents are wasted on a one note character. Also, he was miscast. While Norton’s behavior may be construed as denial (which will be hinted at later on), mostly he just seems stupid. Braugher is one of our more gifted actors (and why the hell isn’t he a bigger name?!), he can play arrogant, kind, stubborn, wise, good, bad.... but he’s not very good at playing stupid. You look into his eyes and see a brain a-workin’ behind them. That clashes with Norton’s character.
Bud comes in and acts like a pig-headed jerk, angry at Jim and Myron for guzzling beer. In a moment, though, he’ll prove to be much more credible a character than Norton. Ollie calls the people in the store around to listen up, and David makes the announcement: Dan was right; we got some dangerous beasties out there in the mist, and they done et Norm. Some of the people laugh at this, including Bud, but Bud agrees to go back to the loading dock to take a look at what Dave-n-Ollie have back there; Biker Dude goes along, too.
Back at the loading dock, Bud prods the tentacle with a wooden pole. The tentacle scrunches in a reflex action, and I have to think that if Norton came back here, he’d be even more set in his opinion; the tentacle looks like a rubber prop. Then the tentacle bubbles and hisses, turns black, and melts into a puddle of goo. Huh? (This wasn’t in the novella, and there was no reason I can think of for Darabont to add this bit.) In on of the VERY few genuine bits of humor this movie has, Bud goes back out into the store and announces, “It appears we may have a problem of some magnitude here.”
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Edited by - BradH812 on 05/31/2008 6:06:41 PM
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 05/30/2008 : 8:40:25 PM
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Dissolve to a Steadicam shot going through the cars parked in the lot, as some low synthesizer music plays very quietly in the background. Inside the store we see the people inside trying to barricade the store windows with bags of dog food, fertilizer, etc., essentially trying to turn the store front into a sort of bunker. We then go into the ladies’ room. Mrs. Carmody crouches in one of the stalls, a candle burning in front of her (where’d she get the candle, we wonders?), praying. Ah yes, it’s clear from her words and from Harden’s performance that Mrs. Carmody is EE-vill. No joke. (The scene was originally longer, showing a bit of humanity to this character before she started acting all helter-skelter; of course, they cut that part out.) Amanda comes in to use the john, and because It’s In The Script, she makes a friendly gesture toward Mrs. Carmody. Mrs. Carmody rejects it out of hand, giving a very rude (and vulgar, for a religious fanatic) response. Details on Marcia Gay Harden’s performance are forthcoming, but here’s the short version for now: if I saw her on the street after seeing this movie, I’d tell her to give back her Oscar. (In her defense, Harden, like the other actors, didn’t have any good material to work with, and she was badly miscast. Again, details will follow soon enough.)
We go out to the store a few minutes later. Norton continues to be a pig headed dope, while Mrs. Carmody continues to be Religious Zealot, and I continue to be the guy who’s getting tired of this bunch, fast. People in the market continue to stack bags against the windows. I wouldn’t think that a supermarket, even one this size, would have that many large bags of dog food and fertilizer on hand. All the while, Mrs. Carmody continues her preachin’, waving a Bible around. She goes way-y-y-y-y-y over the top, finally saying that they have one way to get out alive: “expiation in blood.” Yes, fellow Earthlings, she’s calling for a human sacrifice. Amanda has finally had enough of this crap, and she goes up and slaps Mrs. Carmody but good. She then apologizes to the crowd(!), saying this is “getting a little too Old Testament for my tastes.” Mrs. Carmody doesn’t even slow down, and I have to wonder how stiff the spines of these people are. Around this time, most people here would shout, “Would you PLEASE shut yer damn mouth?!” And if Mrs. Carmody refused, they’d gag her and shove her to the side. Seriously, in an emergency like this, preaching like this would get old to the crowd even faster than it does to the viewer. Mrs. Carmody says that before this is all over, people will “beg Mother Carmody” for her guidance. Finally, Ollie does tell Mrs. Carmody to shut it up, or he’ll tape her mouth shut. She calls his bluff, and he backs down. Wimp. (Considering how much backbone Ollie will prove to have, I don’t buy him not carrying out his threat at all.) Ollie then explains to the out-of towners that everyone in town knows that Mrs. Carmody is “unstable.” Biker Dude answers, “No sh!t.” It’s obvious that Ollie is being very polite about all this, and that Mrs. Carmody is clearly a lot more than “unstable.” Remember this; it’ll seriously bite this movie on the ass later on.
Let me break off yet again and go into a big problem this movie had. Marcia Gay Harden was seriously miscast as Mrs. Carmody. First off, Mrs. Carmody, as written in the book, was in her seventies, probably the oldest person in the market. So, one could buy her calling herself “Mother Carmody” there. But Harden is, what, 46 or 47? In anything like the real world, calling herself “Mother Carmody” (to a crowd ranging in age from 8 to 78) would get (a) get a good laugh going at her expense and (b) lunch any chance she’d have at credibility.
Here’s another problem. While Harden will never be mistaken for Elle MacPherson, I’ve always thought she was fairly attractive. Now, when it comes to religious fanatics, you get some that are under the surface, hiding their extreme beliefs under an ordinary facade. Then you get some who are willing to go to a street corner and start “prophesizing.” Mrs. Carmody is obviously in this second group, and Marcia Gay Harden looks much too good to be believable. In my experience, women who have extreme religious views like this (and I mean EXTREME) have a certain look to them. They may look pinched or drawn, or maybe they don’t look very clean, or maybe they have a robotic look (a la the women in the polygamy sect in Texas). But they don’t look very good. Think about it. Harden’s too pretty to play this character. Add to that, she doesn’t have a whole lot of charisma, which is vital for someone like this. One could see Kathy Bates, maybe, or Louise Fletcher in this part. Harden was a terrible choice, all in all, to play this character. But then, Mrs. Carmody was damaged beyond repair once the script was finalized. Okay, back to the movie.
There’s a brief moment where the soldiers are talking amongst themselves and Billy comes up and asks when their friends are gonna come and get everyone out of this mess. Hmmmmmm, do you think this mist will be the military’s fault? What could the Big Bad Gubmint be up to, we wonders? Billy’s question of whether the soldiers have a radio is legit (and a version of that plays a MAJOR part in the end of the book), but the movie completely ignores it from here on. We have a father-son moment between David and Billy, which wasn’t great, but I’ve seen a lot worse.
So, here’s the plan Our Heroes have devised: Stack up those big bags o’ stuff against the windows to (hopefully) make it harder for any beasties to break in. There will be buckets of lighter fluid and mops placed at strategic points nearby. People will take turns standing guard, looking out cubbyholes in the makeshift bunker. If anything gets in, they will dip the mops in the buckets and light ‘em up, making crude torches, and using any garden tools, what have you, they have to try and drive any intrudin’ monsters back. There aren’t any guns in the store, though a crusty older guy with a walrus mustache (I’ll just call him Walrus. He is the Walrus, coo coo ca-choo*) has a shotgun in his truck. No, he’s not willin’ to stroll on out there and get it. Can’t say I blames him. Looky here, though, Amanda has a .38 revolver and some extra bullets (her explanation for having it with her was fairly plausible). She’s not very good with it, but Ollie reveals he’s a crack shot. This is one of the movie’s few good surprises: the nerd will turn out (some of the time, anyway) to be a bad-ass; Ollie will be the closest thing this movie has to a de facto hero.
*[Most of the characters in this movie have had their names mentioned at some point or other. I’m just giving them my own names since their proper titles are mentioned very briefly, and it’s VERY easy to forget them, considering how memorable — or not — these people are.]
Uh oh! Looks like Norton and about a half dozen others have decided to take a walk and go for help, the hell with what David is saying. David asks Norton to do him one favor: tie the end of one rope around his waist, so everyone will know he got at least a hundred yards. Biker Dude volunteers to take the rope: he’s not in with Norton’s crew, but he wants to make a try for Walrus’s shotgun. As he ties the rope around his waist, Ollie offers him a pen knife, in case something goes wrong and he has to cut himself loose. Biker Dude silently turns the offer down, showing Ollie that he has a much bigger knife already. (I can probably count on one hand the number of times the movie tries to make a joke. This moment, and Bud’s announcement, are the only two bits of humor that Darabont doesn’t squash flat.) David and Norton have a final quiet moment, where Norton gives a glimmer that he may realize he’s heading into certain death, but is just too stubborn to turn back. (One scene cut from the movie may have given some depth to Norton. Early on, it was revealed that Norton’s wife had recently died, and he’d taken it very hard; it could be argued that Norton was suicidal here. If the scene had been kept in.) And then they’re off.
One thing I noticed about Norton’s crew: at least half of them are black, comprising most of the store’s non-white population. Remember what I said about this movie not playing the race card? Ehhhh, nevermind.
Biker Dude tells Mrs. Carmody, “Hey, crazy lady. I believe in God too. I just don’t think he’s the bloodthirty asshole you make him out to be.” Mrs. Carmody gets all snarky, basically telling Biker Dude to go to hell. Maybe Darabont put this in as a sop. “See? I’m not bashing all believers! Look at this guy!” Balls, I say.
There is a genuinely nice shot of Norton’s group plus Biker Dude wandering off into the mist. What follows is one of the better moments in the movie. For about two minutes or so, we have David continuing to pay out the rope, as the suspense builds. (Remember, the hallmark of a Jabootu movie: if you have a good scene, a really bad moment will follow.) Then (uh oh) the line stops moving for a moment.... Then.... It starts to go out, fast. Then faster, shooting out fast enough to burn David’s hands. The Descent had a similar moment, but in that movie, the woman holding the rope sustained a pretty bad hand injury. Not here. Nope, they get a jacket for David to use as a gripper, and the scene continues, David’s hand none the worse for wear. The rope continues to shoot out like a fishing line with Jaws on the other end.... “Hold on! I’ve got something very big! Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies....” (Management: Uh, Brad...?) Okay, okay. Anyway, the rope is pulled up, jerks back and forth several times, then drops to the ground. Except for the rope-not-burning-David’s-hand bit, this scene has worked very well. David starts pulling the rope in as fast as he can. Darabont could have shot this scene word-for-word as it appeared in the novella, and it would have worked very well. In the book, David pulled the rope all the way in. It was neatly severed... and the last yard or so was covered in blood. We didn’t need any more info, did we. But no-o-o-o-o-o!!! Frankie-boy couldn’t leave well enough alone. Here, it’s the last twenty feet of rope that’s covered in blood, and at the end of the rope is Biker Dude. His lower half, anyway. Yes, they show what’s left of the guy, and why yes, we do see blood and entrails hanging out of the half-corpse. David cuts the rope and shuts the door, leaving the half-body out there. (By the way, Mrs. Carmody was crying in terror a moment ago, but is in gleeful I-told-you-so mode here. Maybe Darabont was trying to make her look multi-faceted. Instead, she comes off as very inconsistent.)
Before getting to the next bit... (Management: Not again.) From time to time, I’ll see a movie with what I call a sit-back moment, and sometimes I’ll see one with a walk-out moment. A sit-back moment is a welcome sight. The filmmakers do something (usually early on) that clues the audience in that this one’s gonna be good. A certain shot, or a line, or a joke, something that tells the audience, “Just sit back and relax. These people know what they’re gonna do; you’re gonna get your money’s worth.” See? Sit-back moments. On the other end, there’s the walk-out moment. It’s kinda self-explanatory: it’s a moment that tells you, “Get up and walk out now. Get a free pass if you can. It’s all downhill from here.” The shot of Biker Dude’s lower half was the first walk-out moment in The Mist. Unfortunately, when one walk-out moment comes early on (about the 45-minute mark), it means there will be more. And there will be. But hey, look at the bright side: Andre Braugher’s character has been killed off, so he doesn’t have to be humiliated by spending another minute in this thing.
Dissolve to later in the day. We learn through dialogue that there’s about a half-hour of daylight left. Jim and Myron have worked out a way to hook a couple of bright emergency lights to a car battery, but they note that if they turn them on, the juice will run down in about ten minutes; it’s agreed that they will only turn these things on in serious emergencies. Otherwise, just use the many battery-powered lanterns for light. We then go into an employee lounge; Checkout Girl is here. Soldier Boy comes in, and they have a character moment, where they reveal that Soldier Boy is about to ship out, presumably to Iraq (I count that as another political bit; thanks a fat lot, Darabont). We learn that, yes, there’s been some puppy love goin’ on between these two for some time, unrequited, of course. Also, it’s intimated (pardon the pun) that Checkout Girl is a virgin. This doesn’t go anywhere, but this confirms to me that Checkout Girl is such lunchmeat that she should go and hang herself up between the genoa salami and the olive loaf (does anyone actually EAT that olive loaf crap?).
Our Heroes gather around their bunker, and Darabont shoots his foot off once again. The bags go about two-thirds of the way up the windows. For the lower six feet, we have plenty o’ horse manure and Alpo; above that mark, it’s unprotected plate glass. In other words, this thing is completely useless. Great. Too many bags to be believable in this setting, but not enough to do any good. Criminetly. Anyway, Ollie and Dan have a bit of chit-chat, then we see another guy at his cubbyhole. We hold on his view out the window. Does this sort of thing surprise anyone? Let’s see. Look out the window, hold on it to build suspense, then have a beastie come and land right there. Gee. How original. How effective. Bleah. (Good horror movies know how to make stuff like this seem fresh. Darabont isn’t anywhere near a good horror director. He has the basics down, but none of the finesse or raw talent.)
Whaddaya know, a big bug (about a foot long) lands on the window! And then another one. And another. Pretty soon, the front window is covered in these things, all to a hushed subtle score.
And once again, it’s time for another edition of Ritalin-free Brad. I’ll give the movie a few points in one field. Darabont is good at creating an atmosphere. The cinematography during the outside shots is really nice. Gots to take away some points, though. The cinematography is pretty bad when we get inside. Seriously, during the night scenes, it’s okay, but during the day, it’s lit much too brightly. I’ve been in stores when the power was out, and none of them looked like this; it literally looks like the lights are all working just fine.
But here’s another point in the movie’s favor. Mark Isham got off to a good start as a film composer in 1983 with his excellent score for the great Never Cry Wolf. He had some pretty solid work after that, most notably The Hitcher, A Midnight Clear, The Public Eye, and A River Runs Through it. Ever since around 1996, though, in my mind, he’s been coasting. I’ve seen several movies that he scored, and the scores all had a generic feel, like he couldn’t be bothered to really put in an effort. Here, he comes part of the way toward redeeming himself. Very little of the score here is memorable, nor is it meant to be (and I’d be surprised if there was more than 20 minutes of original music in the movie). There is almost no melody, and it’s usually near-subliminal synth work. Sidney Lumet noted that he never really heard the score for The Silence of the Lambs so much as felt it. That’s the case here. Isham is guilty of falling back on cliche and pulling out the tribal drums whenever an action sequence gets started, and it’s possible he’s borrowing a bit too much from Steve Roach, but mostly the score does its job quite well.
Anyway, back to the bugs. The people in the store come forward, bringing their lanterns with them. Um, guys, don’t nocturnal insects tend to fly toward bright lights? Mrs. Carmody steps into frame, quoting the Bible, natch, then says to herself, “Wow. Look at those stingers!” Whonk! Plot point alert! Anyone laying odds on whether someone’s gonna get stung and kilt by one of these big bugs? (The stingers were mentioned more subtly in the book, but they didn’t come into play.)
And here comes the money shot. A dinosaur-like bird-like thing comes in and grabs one of the bugs. Another miniature pterodactyl comes in, hits the glass, and puts a big crack in it. Jim and Myron panic and start up the emergency lights just as Ollie figures out that these bugs, yes, are attracted to light. No, no one runs back there and yells at them to shut the lights off (although they do have the sense to shut off the lanterns), because then we wouldn’t have another horrific scene, and we gots to have horrific scenes, yes? (I know, it’s a horror movie. But horror movies don’t have to be Idiot Pictures.) So they have the lamps off, but them emergency lights is blazin’. Dum-dums.
One of the bird things grabs a bug and in the process comes crashing through the unprotected window. Good plannin’ ahead there, gang. The bugs come in and swarm around, looking for the lights. Amanda is able to kill one of the bugs with a rake, then yells, “Sally, look out!” Yep, this is where Checkout Girl checks out. A bug alights on Checkout Girl’s shoulder and stings her in the neck. Joy. Lemme guess. We’re gonna get loving close ups of Checkout Girl bleeding out and going into convulsions. (Immediate Future Brad: Nope. Worse.) Soldier Boy goes to Checkout Girl, who is indeed starting to convulse. Meanwhile, no one has been able to get those damn torches lit. Seriously! This is almost funny. I know these guys aren’t supposed to be professional fighters, and they’re supposed to be in over their heads. But do they really need to be this incompetent?!
One of the bird-things gets in and starts flying around the store (it was this image in Stephen King’s brain that got his creative juices fired, but King knew it was mostly supposed to be a lark). If the movie had the slightest sense of humor, this would have been a great shot (it reminds me of the ending of Finding Nemo, when Nigel the pelican gets into the dentist’s office). Instead, it’s dead serious. Yeah. Right. A second bird gets into the store. The scent given off by the bugs would be more familiar to this bird, but it decides instead to feast on one of the people here. It lands on one guy’s back and starts tearing hunks of meat and flesh out of his back and neck. Yes, we do see lovely shots of gore. At long last, Our Heroes get one of those torches lit, David goes to fight this bird with it, then we cut to Checkout Girl, who is gasping for breath as her face and neck swell horribly. Note that I saw the seam where the prosthetic ended. Also, I couldn’t help but think of a scene in a trailer for a goofy Martin Short comedy, where Short’s character (who was allergic to bee stings) carried on a cheerful conversation, unaware his face had swollen to twice its size, much like Checkout Girl’s face looks here.
Another guys goes in and gets another torch lit, but the clumsy oaf trips over a bucket of lighter fluid, somehow gets it all over his back, and sets himself on fire. Flame on, dude! David kills the flaming bird-thing while they try to get Burning Guy put out. Stop, drop, and roll, people. I learned that when I was twelve. Another bug comes in and lands on Mrs. Carmody, but it doesn’t sting her, leading her to believe, Yes, she is The Chosen One! She smiles blissfully. Um, okay.
Finally, Ollie is able to get a shot at the second bird thing and kill it. The scene’s nearly over, and it would’ve been great, if it had had been the least bit self-aware. This oh-so-serious tone is getting to be a real turn-off with me.
So, Our Heroes try to pick up the pieces and patch up that hole, and also get Burn Victim to safety. And then we have another loving close-up of Soldier Boy crying over the dead body of Checkout Girl, whose head has swollen to the size of a basketball.
Now, I know the rule of monster movies is, there are no rules. Anyone’s a target. You can be old, young, good, bad, pretty, ugly, anything. No one is safe. No problem. But I detected a real note of glee in the close-ups of Checkout Girl. One senses that Darabont enjoys making these characters suffer for the sake of making them suffer. It’s this strong hint of directorial sadism that makes this scene Walk-Out Moment #2.
Oh, by the way, the EE-vill Mrs. Carmody is starting to pick up converts now. Uhhhhh, okay, whatever.
We have a transitional shot of the outside; an unseen whatsit pulls away Biker Dude’s remaining half, presumably as a midnight snack.
Back inside, and it’s very early morning. Most of the people here have crashed out from exhaustion. David and Amanda wake up and have a quiet character moment that’s technically not bad but is still too gloom-and doom for my tastes. Ollie comes up and reveals that Joe (Burn Victim) is “getting worse.” We go back to (I think) the employee lounge. Burn Victim Is crying out, saying how much pain he’s in, telling the others that if they can’t help him to use the gun to put him out of his misery. A guy standing over him refuses to do this (we’ll learn in a moment that this is the Burn Victim’s brother). Again, Darabont is piling the depression on very thick.
Speaking of piling on the gloom, we go back out into the store to learn that Gray-Haired Lady has committed suicide. She lies dead, an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her. Question 1: why would she bring sleeping pills with her here? Wouldn’t they be beside her bed at home? Question 2: why are we supposed to care all that much? We barely got to know her.
David gets together with Ollie, Dan, Bud, and another unnamed guy, and they confer on BV’s problems. They need to get him some medication, and the supermarket doesn’t have a pharmacy of its own. That’s it. If some huge monster-containing mist rolls over my town, I’m gonna make sure I’m at the Wal-Mart. (Too bad the movie couldn’t have given us a little gallows humor and made a similar joke.) They decide they need to get to the drugstore next door to get as much painkiller, antibiotics, and burn medicine as they can carry. Other Guy raises a red flag (correctly, in my view): this may not be such a hot idea. David says that they need to get out for good pretty soon anyway. His reasoning is that the birds ‘n’ bugs got in without too much trouble; if them big beasties get a little rumbly in the tumbly, they’ll have a smorgasbord waitin’ for them in here. (The book had David and Company eventually figuring out how to — hopefully — keep all them monstas from coming in and sniffin’ around, but that is dropped from the movie.) It’s here that Amanda comes in and tells everyone about Gray Haired Lady offing herself. They carry her body over and lay it on top of the bags. Nice touch there, Darabont, thanks a fat lot. Anyway, David has a plan: get to the drugstore, come back with the meds, then make a break for his four-wheel drive and drive south as far as possible. Dan says, “Is that your big plan?” Again, I agree with the guy. Amanda points out (correctly) that, hey, Norton and his group didn’t do too well with that same plan. They go back and forth on reasons why and why not to go ahead with this idea (which sounds pretty dumb to me), then David gives another reason for wanting to run: “Her.” Guess who. He compares her to Jim Jones, saying he wants to get out “before people start drinking the Kool Aid.” Ollie agrees with David. Amanda doesn’t like this theory, saying that people will not flock to Mrs. Carmody so soon. In the real world, she’d probably be right; remember, as bad as things have been, less than a day has passed since the mist blew in. I’ll go into details on the problem here in the Afterthoughts. Anyway, more debating. Jeez, stop with the gabbing! David says Mrs. Carmody will gain supporter by supporter, and she’ll have a majority of the people on her side by nightfall. Well, Skippy, that’s why they invented duct tape! Say, didn’t Ollie threaten to do just that? Tape the woman’s mouth shut? So, Ollie, why haven’t you made good on that threat before Mrs. Carmody could become a major problem? Idiots. Everyone here is willing to talk talk talk talk, but no one is willing to do anything. Insert politician (or United Nations) joke here. The fact is, a sane (or courageous) person would try and nip Mrs. Carmody in the bud here (or, preferably, much sooner). Doesn’t say too much for Our Heroes, hey?
Amanda continues to go against the grain, saying she believes people are basically good. No, I don’t believe that, but I don’t believe David’s counter either: take out the electricity and the phones and scare people to death “and you’ll see how primitive they get.” Um, David, that doesn’t put us in the Stone Age. It’s puts us in 1870. And people did survive that period, didn’t they? I mean, we’re still here, right? Dan says people will start turning to anyone who promises a solution, no matter how crazy, and this is the whole point that Darabont tries to make: get people in an emergency, and they’ll crumble. Again, I’ll address this in the Afterthoughts. Truth is, if there was another leader figure in the market (who was competent, unlike Our Heroes), Mrs. Carmody wouldn’t last long. Ollie goes along with Dan, saying that if you put enough people in a room, they’ll “pick sides and think of reasons to kill each other. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?” Ollie strikes me as being Darabont’s mouthpiece here. I think it’s Darabont, not Mrs. Carmody, who’s being shrill and preachy here. (Okay, Stephen King will often take pot shots at religion, but this talking-head bit was mostly invented by Darabont. Also, this scene took place later in the book, after Mrs. Carmody had had more time to find herself some converts.)
David says let’s worry about going to the drugstore first, then worry about getting to his land rover. (In the book, there was a tacit acknowledgement later on that this drugstore expedition was a dumb idea. Nope, nothing like that in the movie.) We have another father-son moment between David and Billy, and Billy’s dialogue rang false to me. I didn’t buy this scene, and it piles on more bleakness.
Amanda advises David, if anything goes wrong, he should “cut and run.” Hmmmmmm, more political bits, eh, Frankie? So, they head for the door, and Mrs. Carmody cuts them off, lambasting David, saying that he’ll make his boy an orphan, and that the party will “bring the fiends of hell down on our heads.” The thing is, she’s probably right. Mrs. Carmody’s dialogue is 90% hellfire-and-brimstone. The other 10% is much more sensible than anything David or his crew have said so far. I don’t think Darabont grasped the dichotomy here; he was too busy bashin’ religion. This bit was done slightly more believably in the book. Here, these guys look pretty stupid. Here’s another problem: Our Heroes have been cooped up here for a day. So has everyone in the drugstore. Yet no one in the drugstore has come over here. You know they’re not surviving over there by eating Dristan and Stay-Free Mini-Pads. (That’s a quote from the book, which was smart enough to throw in a joke now and then.) Burn Victim’s Brother is hell bent on going to the drugstore. Mrs. Carmody predicts that BVB will get ripped to shreds and that David could be endangering everyone else with this foolish plan. Need I say it? Sheesh, when you’re trying to paint someone as a religious nut and she comes across as the smartest one in the room, you’re screwin’ the pooch somewhere. Anyway, Mrs. Carmody goes on and on, building in volume until Nice Older Lady throws a can of peas at her and says, “Shut up you miserable buzzard!” Remember, in the book, Mrs. Carmody was in her seventies, and if memory serves, NOL was around sixty. That “miserable buzzard” line worked. But here Frances Sternhagen is about 75, thirty years Marcia Gay Harden’s senior. Nope, the line doesn’t work.
The search party will consist of David, Ollie, Burn Victim’s Brother, Dan, Jim, Soldier Boy, Nice Older Lady, and Unnamed Guy. We get in a cheap little dig at Jim’s expense because, ha ha, Jim’s supposed to be The Hick. Also we see Mrs. Carmody shivering from fear. For at least the third time, this doesn’t look like a three-dimensional character; this looks like someone Darabont is sliding from one end of the scale to the other at whim. The party is armed with fire axes, rakes, poles, and the like, and they make their way from the market to (bum bum BUM) the pharmacy. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 05/30/2008 : 8:43:59 PM
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The pharmacy is quite dark (much more realistic than the lighting in the market. Our Heroes finally show some brains and figure this may not be a safe place to hang around in too long. So, the plan is, get the meds, get out, rack ‘em and pack ‘em, we’re phantoms in three minutes, tops. David and Ollie set to getting the meds, trying to be as quiet as possible. This bit was competently done. Dan, Jim, and Soldier Boy mill about smartly, then they hear something scurrying around. Dan signals to David that they’re not alone, David tells Ollie fifteen seconds and we’re out, Ollie fills his bag with whatever he can grab, and they make their way as quickly as possible to the entr—
Gotcha! Mwa ha ha ha!!! No-o-o-o-o-o, they don’t do that! Dave and Ollie get the meds, but after getting out from behind the counter, they continue to look around! And then they see what happened to the customers here: everyone’s cocooned in giant spiderwebs. Sound familiar? In his review of The Beast, Douglas Milroy noted at one point that a scene was so derivative of Aliens that he yelled “Pull your team out Gorman!” and his wife nearly fell on the floor laughing. Doug, if you’re reading this and are watching this damn movie, it’s time to make that joke again. David finally, finally gives the word: clear out right now. Took ya long enough, ya dope.
Jim starts backing away from the cocoons, (of course) unwittingly backing into another cocoon. Yawn, a hand reaches out and grabs his shoulder. Ho hum, musical sting. Oh dear me, Jim whirls around in alarm. Well looky here, it’s MP guy. D’you remember MP guy? He croaks out, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s our fault.” Then his body bursts open in several places and hundred of baby spiders come crawling out. Oh, it takes several agonizing seconds for MP guy to die even after bursting, cuz Darabont wanted it that way. Well, we’ve seen the baby spiders. Where’s the grown-ups? Ahhhhh, there they are! A big hairy spider-like creature about two feet long comes jumpin’ out, followed by some more of his fellow kreechers, shooting out strands of web. Acid-coated web: we see it land on the floor and eat into the concrete. Hold on. If these spiders’ webs are covered in acid, how in the hell did they cocoon these people up without the webs turning them into spreadable paté? (The spiders and acid webs were in the book, but this cocooning crap wasn’t. Yet another winnah for Mr. Darabont. Dumb-ass.) Uh oh! A web gets caught around Burn Victim’s Brother’s leg. He starts bleeding out and screaming bloody murder as the web strand continues to eat into his thigh. We see Jim, who has snapped by this point, watching MP guy who is still alive convulse and fall forward, falling apart and releasing a glut of baby Boriseseses. Remember, this movie has been dead serious. It’s not so over-the-top you have to laugh at the gore (a la Bad Taste) or tongue-in-cheek, or even blessed with a sick sense of humor, a la Cabin Fever (a movie I personally hated, but it was better than this crap). This qualifies as Walk-Out Moment #3.* Other Guy tries to bolt for the door, but a spider drops down and shoots an acid web in his face. How cute. A spider blocks NOL’s way, and she pulls out a can of bug spray and a lighter, killing the spider with her makeshift blowtorch. In the book, this was an honestly funny gag. Here, as usual, Darabont crushes it down. Our remaining Heroes try to beat feet outta there, dragging Burn Victim’s Brother along, but a big spider is blocking the way. Ollie comes in and prepares to get all Dirty Harry on the spider’s ass, but the gun’s empty. No prob: Dan impales the spider on a broken pole. They check BVB to find he’s died of blood loss. Chalk up another victim, and I blame David and Ollie for this fiasco. They haul ass back to the store and make it in. Well, that went well!
*[This is as good a time as any to describe the visual effects work on the monsters. It ain’t too impressive. The tentacles were particularly bad, but while the birds-n-bugs and these spiders were, technically, not so fake looking, they’re nothing new. We’ve seen better work in many, many other monster movies, and the FX team brings very little new to the table here. There is one notable exception that’ll come later. Anyway, this would be forgiveable (even the obvious matte work with the tentacles) if only the movie had let itself be a B-movie, rather than Darabont’s attempt at GREAT ART. Put the two together so clunkily, though, and one starts to wonder why anyone bothered.]
Fade up. David passed out after getting back to the market. He wakes up to hear that Burn Victim died of his wounds while they were asleep (in other words, the drugstore trip got two people killed for nothing). Oh, in the background, Mrs. Carmody is on a roll, talking about “expiation,” repeating that word again and again in her sermons. Yep, that’s Jim in her congregation. The hick done snapped. Walrus compares Mrs. Carmody to Castro (a direct line from the book), but remember, Castro had more than twenty-four hours to build his support. Nice Older Lady and Walrus are ready to leave with David, but David’s soured on that idea. They bring him over to listen to Mrs. Carmody who continues to bray, “Expiation! Expiation!” Ollie gives one of the few jokes in the movie (and if course it’s done in a heavy handed way): “Welcome to Sesame Street. Today’s word is ‘expiation.’” Amanda comments that it hasn’t even been two days, pretty much supporting just why this whole part of the story is a wash. Again, wait till the Afterthoughts. Ollie volunteers to get some groceries in bags and have them waiting by the door, and a new plan is set: first chance they get, David, Billy, Amanda, Ollie, Bud, NOL, Dan, Myron (d’you remember Myron?) and Walrus will pile into David’s four-by-four and get outta there (that’s nine people piling into one vehicle). First off, David wants to have a talk with the soldiers to elaborate on what MP guy said before he turned into spider food.
David and Company confront Soldier Boy. No, he doesn’t know where the other two soldiers are, so they go back to the loading dock to search for them. All of this is intercut with Mrs. Carmody continuin’ to preach, and her schtick is annoying the hell out of me. (Again, David and Company’s failure to deal with her earlier doesn’t say much for them.) Uh oh, bum bum BUM, Jim notices David and his groups draggin’ Soldier Boy back to the loading dock.
Whoopsy, looks like the other two soldiers done gone and hung themselves. David susses out that this whole thing was “a military f***-up.” Yep, it’s The Arrowhead Project, da Big Bad Military! Odd bodkins, Jim overheard, and he comes in, grabs Soldier Boy, and hauls him out in front of Mrs. Carmody and her followers. Soldier Boy breaks down crying, saying it’s not his fault, that he’s just a low-level grunt, a local, and he didn’t have any control over what what going on up there. Mrs. Carmody drags it out from him: this Arrowhead Project was a secret military project to, for some reason, open up a hole to another dimension. I did not make that up. (The book had the two soldiers hang themselves much earlier, and the Arrowhead Project and all this dimensional warp crap was speculation among Our Heroes. Darabont made it fact and created Soldier Boy for the film.) An ultra-serious horror-movie, and we have people opening a whole into Dimension X and all these B-movie monsters comin’ over and yellin’ “Chow time!” Well, that did it. Mrs. Carmody pulls out all the stops, saying that we have brought all of this on ourselves with our newfangled technological stuff. She dials it to 11, railing on about God punishing us for putting men on the moon (?!), and then (oh joy) going on about stem cell research and abortion. Sure, more politics, why not? (And no, NONE of this was in the book.) Again, Mrs. Carmody is a one-note character who is so over the top she’s comical. But Darabont doesn’t get the joke.
So the people swarm around Soldier Boy and attack him, then the store’s butcher comes up and stabs Soldier Boy several times in the gut. No kidding. Looks like it’s time for the sacrifice. (Once again, this moment was NOT in the book.) The crowd then carries Soldier Boy to the door and throws him out, “feeding him to the beast.” Darabont milks every bit of Soldier Boy’s terror (although I have to wonder how Soldier Boy could walk and run around after being stabbed and probably mortally wounded). He looks out and sees what looks like a giant crab heading his way. Jeez, kid, just throw him a Krabby Patty! Or throw him some money, and the greedy bugger will leave you alone! Come to think of it, they should’ve thrown that tentacled beastie a clarinet. Say, when are we gonna meet the giant dumb starfish and the giant helium-voiced sponge—
And Jabootu sayeth: “I never stopped keeping track, Brad. Count those mentions as 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9!”
Management: Sigh. Ya love to run a joke into the ground, don’t you, Brad.
Uh, you’re one of the running jokes, me bucko.
Management: You’re right. Do carry on, sir. At least you have a sense of humor, which is more than this movie has.
Okay, so the crab thing comes up and grabs Soldier Boy and tears him apart. Jim watches the carnage (which is drawn out once again) then turns back to the store, an EE-vill grin on his face. This is Walk-Out Moment #4, at least. If I were in the theater, I may have stuck it out for this long, but this would be the moment that had me leaving and demanding my money back.
Mrs. Carmody predicts, “the beast will leave us alone tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Fade up on what I assume is late at night or very early morning. Billy and David wake up, and David promises never to leave Billy again. Billy says, “Promise you won’t let the monsters get me. Ever. No matter what.” I do smells foreshadowing, I does. The thing it’s foreshadowing will be a true jaw-dropper. The bad kind.
There’s one thing I’ve noticed here, and it’s a pet peeve I have about movies. Everyone’s been here for almost 48 hours straight. No one’s hair is matted down or greasy, no one looks the least bit rough, and most of the men have, at most, mild five o’clock shadow. Oops!
Fade up. It’s dawn. Our Heroes awake and start to sneak out of the place. Uh oh, the grocery bags are gone. Double uh oh, Mrs. Carmody is sitting nearby watching them. So, Our Heroes slept through the night and didn’t bother to post an armed lookout to make sure Mrs. Carmody wouldn’t cause trouble? Dummies. David qualifies as a Designated Hero, and like in many Designated Hero movies, the villain turns out to be much smarter than the hero. Crikey. Triple uh oh! Bum bum BUM! Mrs. Carmody’s congregation (which is now 90% of the people in the store) are awake, and they surround Our Heroes. Mrs. Carmody drones on and on and on. David tries to reason with Mrs. Carmody. In the book, this had a shred of credibility. Here, though, remember, we know for a fact that Mrs. Carmody is willing and able to commit cold-blooded murder to keep control. It’s painfully obvious she can’t be reasoned with. David, you fool! Mrs. Carmody goes into her umpty-eleventh spiel, concluding that one of David’s group will be the next sacrifice, namely Billy and Amanda. And finally, at long last (and about damn time, too), Ollie pulls out the gun and puts a bullet through Mrs. Carmody’s brain. Too bad he didn’t do this before Mrs. Carmody’s group cacked Soldier Boy, yeah? Day late and a dollar short, Ollie. And is this the first time that someone figured out that David and his group had a loaded gun they could use to defend themselves? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
So, now that the EE-vill Mrs. Carmody has been offed, her followers don’t seem to realize that they still outnumber David’s crew seven- or eight to-one. So Our Heroes bust out of the market and make the run for David’s four-by-fours, and we get a last, loving close-up of Mrs. Carmody’s body, blood running out of her head and pooling underneath here. And with that, at long last, we’re outta the store!
Ollie is the first one to make it to the land rover. He opens the doors and pauses, giving himself a relieved smile. Fool! Don’t you realize that’s a good way to get yourself— Well, too late. That crab thing has spotted Ollie. It grabs him and tears him apart, and it would be more disgusting than it is, except that the FX work is obviously a model and puppet. This was in the book, too, and I hated it there, seeing as Ollie had been the story’s most heroic character by far. But then, monsters have no rules on who they kill. No problem. The movie clearly enjoys making Ollie suffer. THERE’s your problem. As Ollie dies, he drops the gun (conveniently) on the hood of David’s car. Myron and Walrus get themselves et by spiders (with much screaming and agony, natch), and Bud panics and runs back into the store. So, David, Billy, Amanda, Dan, and NOL make it into the car. David starts it up. Time to get this show on the road.
As David starts up the car, we hear a musical track that sounds different from what we’ve heard before. It has a slightly different tone, and one gathers that we might hear something more melodic. Unfortunately, it sounds like it’s gonna be a funeral dirge— Damn! As I was thinking that, voices began to wail on the soundtrack. No joke! Our Heroes slowly pull out, going past the market (and we get a shot from inside as the crowd looks out the windows at them) as the wailing builds.
The music here is over the top, but the musicianship is solid. One suspects Mark Isham’s been listening to lots of Lisa Gerrard, because that’s exactly who this sounds li— Waitaminute. Holy sh!t! It is Lisa Gerrard! Oh, Mommy! (Future Brad: Fast forward about fifteen minutes into the future, and it’s confirmed. The track is “The Host of Seraphim” by Dead Can Dance. Go ahead and download it off Amazon; it’s a beautiful song, though I’d recommend you have some Prozac handy when listening to it.)
Management: Okay, Brad, rewind back and finish the movie.
Awwwww, do I have to? Oh, all right.
Our Heroes make their way to David’s house, where we find that David’s wife is (presumably) dead, cocooned near the busted-in picture window. David breaks down crying, and one suspects Darabont wanted the audience to do the same, but to be brutally honest, I no longer gave a damn. Amazingly the film does not have David’s wife open her eyes and screwm in agony as her body is ripped apart by emerging baby spiders, all as her son if forced to watch. No, it doesn’t do that. But considering what’s in store for Our Heroes, it’s possible this just slipped Darabont’s mind. Our Heroes make their way to the interstate and crawl along. At one point, they pass a school bus, and we see a kid, dead and cocooned, still inside. Darabont’s isn’t laying it on thick, he isn’t using a trowel, now he’s using a shovel, yes? One suspects he was trying to turn a monster movie into Schindler’s List, forgetting that even List had a joke here and there (one of which nearly had the audience on the floor). So, Dead Can Dance drones their doleful dirge as David Drayton drives through Darabont’s dreary and dreadful dioramic display of death, destruction, doom, and damnation. Dang! (Sesame Street was brought to you by the letter “D”, and by the letters “WTF”.)
Later along the way, they stop the car after they feel and hear a deep rhythmic thumping, heavy enough to shake the car. They look up and see... The Big One.
Finally! A scene that works! This beasty ambles along on six elephantine legs, we see part of its lower body (covered in both fur and tentacles), it has a deep mournful roar.... Oh, yeah, this sucker is at least a hundred feet tall. David and Company look up in awe at this thing. For one glorious moment, everything clicked. Suddenly, it all worked, at least for forty five seconds. The funny thing is, I wasn’t really scared of The Big One. Okay, if I saw him for real I’d piss my pants. And if you got a good look at him up close, this behemoth would probably be hideous (or fake-looking). But here, this creature looks somehow majestic and even noble. I kinda liked this big guy. The music, still mournful and emotional, seemed to fit quite nicely (the music segues from the Dead Can Dance track back to Isham’s score, but it does it pretty smoothly; you may not notice the change if you’re listening). Ironically, this was probably the most depressing moment in this whole stupid thing for me. For one moment, I got a glimpse at the movie that might have been.* Well, The Big Guy lumbers away, and Our Heroes get moving again, and it’s time for the ending. One of the worst endings I can imagine.
*[Highlight this portion if you don’t mind reading a spoiler for another movie. When I dictated that last paragraph, I hadn’t seen Cloverfield. The Mist lost money, but it was lucky it was released two months before that other film; otherwise it would have been a colossal bomb. The monster in Cloverfield leaves even The Big One in the dust. It was three times bigger, tougher, faster, meaner, and a helluva lot scarier. ]
Later along the road, the four-by-four runs out of gas. Our Heroes resign themselves to their fate, and we hear monsters roaring in the distance (including The Big One). Here comes the pain, baby. It’s Darabont’s ending, not King’s (though I’ll take King to task in Afterthoughts). If there was anything salvageable in this movie, it’s about to go up in a puff of smoke.
Everyone looks at each other, nodding in silent agreement. David pulls out the gun. It only has four bullets left, so one of them will have to be left to let the beasties take ‘em. David will get to do the honors. He starts by pointing the gun at his son, who has been sleeping all this time. Billy wakes up and looks at the gun in terror. We go outside the car and see and hear four gunshots. Then we go in, and Billy, Amanda, Dan, and Nice Older Lady lie dead, each with a bullet through the head. David babbles incoherently, probably having lost most of his marbles. He tries to eat the gun himself, but he forgets that, oops, no more bullets. Well, since there’s not much else to do, and since the movie’s almost done, David gets out and waits for one of the beasties to take him.
He looks out and dares the unseen monsters to come and get ‘im.... And if the movie hadn’t self-destructed several times already, it would here. David hears a rumbling coming up behind him, something coming through the mist. I thought the movie couldn’t go any lower, but it’s about to do just that.
And it is....
An Army tank. “The Host of Seraphim” starts to play, apparently in the film’s hopes to have the viewers stick their heads in the oven. Darabont isn’t shovelling anymore; he’s brought out a bulldozer! Then we see an Army truck, loaded with refugees, including two kids tended to by Redhead Buzzcut Lady. D’you remember Redhead Buzzcut Lady? So, she and her kids got out okay, unlike everyone else in this movie. Note that these trucks are coming up behind David. Darabont is telling us that David (irony alert!) never realized he was running from help. Problem is, this means that the Army was coming in from closer to Ground Zero. Our Esteemed Director is a idjit, yeah?
And it’s a convoy! The Army comes in! The mist starts to roll back! The sun begins to shine! That’s right, David just killed his son and three other people for no reason. Well, there was a reason: It was In The Script. Darabont’s script (and he insisted that the ending be filmed this way). David goes down on his knees, completely insane, and starts screaming his head off, as we see the military in full force, fighting off the beasties in the mist. Ooooooops, continuity alert! A little while ago, Our Heroes were on the interstate; now it’s a dirt road they’re on. Thanks, Frank. Good job there.
We crane up to a master shot of the Army convoy, “The Host of Seraphim” grows in volume, and we fade out and go to the end credits.
I suspect that Darabont wanted to put the audience in a place where someone would have to hide the razor blades and sleeping pills. He should’ve worried about the baseball bats. If he were in the room when I saw that ending, he’d be in serious danger.
Some people praised this movie for its “uncompromising” ending. To the contrary, I imagined what R. Lee Ermey’s character in Full Metal Jacket might have said.
Darabont, you son of a bitch. You didn’t even have the damn common courtesy to give us a reach-around. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 05/30/2008 : 8:49:14 PM
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Afterthoughts
Pardon me while I sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. Yeah, I turned into Angry Critic. While writing the review, I wondered if I was going to far, and wondered why Angry-C reared his ugly head. (There is a reason, which I’ll spell out in a moment.)
It’s funny how you can boil a movie’s problems down to two or three things, but those two or three things are in just about every frame.
First off is the movie’s broadside attack on religion, along with its attempt to make a political or sociological speech. As a character, Mrs. Carmody is an absolute disaster. Now, I could go along with a holy roller who was going too far. But this takes that type of person to the extreme. Mrs. Carmody is shrill, braying, one-note. It doesn’t say much for Our Heroes that none of them says early on, “Will you PLEASE shut up?!” As for the other people in the store.... Well, let’s get back to that in a page or two, okay?
The more I think about it, the more firmly I believe Darabont threw in Biker Dude claiming to believe in God as a sop. He had a guy say one line, thinking that would tell people that this movie isn’t a screeching diatribe against religion. Problem is, no one else in the movie professes any belief of any kind. Mrs. Carmody prays; she must be EE-vill! She talks about end times or about God not being happy with humanity; she must be EE-vill! She has the gall to actually carry a Bible with her; she must be EE-vill!
I’ve read arguments that she is supposed to represent someone who twists religion, a false prophet, if you will. That argument might carry some weight, except... Well....
First off, in the novella, Stephen King (not exactly a Southern Baptist) had other characters (including David) profess a religious belief, including saying a prayer now and then. This was taken out for the movie.
The big thing, though, in my mind, is this. Frank Darabont has written the villain as Mrs. Carmody, a Bible-thumping hypocrite who is willing to commit murder. Darabont also adapted The Shawshank Redemption, making the villain a Bible-thumping hypocrite who was willing to commit murder (Warden Norton was just as much a religious zealot in King’s novella, but he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, and he occupied all of 34 pages of a 90-page story.) Darabont also co-wrote the remake of The Blob, which had, as a minor character, a Bible-thumping hypocrite, who turned into the villain at the end, and was clearly willing to commit murder.
I sees a pattern here, I does. Actually, I can’t take credit for this. I stumbled on a note on a message board pointing this out; the guy who posted the message said, “Someone’s got issues.” Indeed. It may not be Mrs. Carmody who’s being shrill and over-the-top here. No, that might be Darabont himself. Oh, and throw the preachiness and hypocrisy in.
Funny thing. I was at the doctor’s office yesterday (after writing most of this review, but before getting into this section). I noticed Marcia Gay Harden’s picture on the cover of an issue of Guideposts. The article she wrote was quite good, and the tone implies that Harden will NOT look at anyone carrying a Bible and assume they’re a zealot who wants to whip their congregation up into a blood frenzy.
Something clicked here. When Mrs. Carmody acts scared to death of what’s going on outside, she’s believable. When she gets all holier-than-thou, she’s overcooked, overstuffed, and overheated. I wonder if Harden did that on purpose? It’s possible she may have realized she’d dropped herself in a real mess, and blown the performance intentionally. Well, one can always hope.
But this brings up a point Darabont tried to drill into the audience: the idea that human monsters are much more dangerous and frightening than any beasties crawling around outside. In and of itself, that’s a good point. And it’s been made in far better films. Cube and especially Targets come to my mind. But in Cube, the monster is a machine that keeps its rules. In Targets, the “monsters” are in the movies, while a human menace walks around in real life.
But remember (cuz Darabont didn’t), this is a monster movie! How do you make the humans worse?
You can’t. If Darabont tries that humans-are-worse argument on me, I can shoot him down with one question: Imagine you’re in that store. What would be more dangerous? One braying wench who can be done in with two bullets, or a whole slew of giant bugs with deadly stingers, bird-things that can tear your throat out with one slash, giant crabs that can tear you apart without breaking a sweat, some tentacled thingy who makes the squid from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea look like a cuttlefish, and a 100-foot tall Big Guy that shakes the ground when it walks?
I kept wondering what it was about Mrs. Carmody that offended me. Certainly, I’ve seen people who act similarly to this woman (I’ve had the misfortune to meet one or two). The character of John Doe in Seven was more extreme, yet that film didn’t offend me. So, what gets me all riled up here?
Well, there’s an additional factor. Mrs. Carmody’s followers. Keep in mind that I’ve gotten fairly cynical about people in recent years, and I’m no idealist. But Darabont posits that people will crumble fast in an emergency and will turn to any source for comfort, no matter how extreme that source may be. Enter Mrs. Carmody, preaching hellfire and brimstone and converting most of the people in the store in less than two days.
Bullsh!t.
That review in the New York Post made note that the novella was written around 1976, and the film was made in 2007. What happened between the two? 9/11. For the most part, people did not act like a bunch of bloomin’ idiots (yes, there were exceptions). King could plead ignorance here; Darabont can’t.
In any case, let’s sum up just how outrageous Darabont’s argument is.* Mrs. Carmody is portrayed from the outset as a rude jerk. It’s made clear that the town considers her to be “unstable” (read: nutso). Now, I can imagine someone like this building a following over months or years. In extreme cases like this, I could imagine her building her base over several days. But N-O-O-O-O!
Mrs. Carmody, whom everyone knows as the town kook, a woman who doesn’t have anyone’s respect, brays and preaches non-stop, with no serious objections from anyone else, and wins over most of the people in the market, to the point where they’re willing to commit murder for her, all in the space of less than twenty-four hours.
Lemme here it! Bullsh!t!
I can’t hear you!
Bullsh!t!
Say it like ya mean it, O my brothers and sisters!
BULLSH!T!!!
*[King is at least partly off the hook. While the speed with which Mrs. Carmody collects followers strains credulity in the novella as well, there are differences. First off, Mrs. Carmody is considered at the beginning to be eccentric but harmless, not “unstable.” Also, many people in town have a lot of respect for her. Second, David’s group clearly screws the pooch several times, most notably by going to the drugstore, possibly driving a lot of people toward Mrs. Carmody. David tacitly admits to making some serious blunders later on. Third, Mrs. Carmody was kept somewhat in the background, lurking at the edges, until around the two-thirds point.]
And the villain wears out her welcome fast. This whole scenario could have been handled in a 22-minute episode of The Twilight Zone... And it was handled, in its entirety, in a total of less than ten minutes, in The Birds.
But this process of trying to hammer something into the audience’s mind tells me something that Darabont may not want to admit: he is as shrill and sanctimonious as Mrs. Carmody is. And he’s so hell-bent (ha ha! I am so punny!) on demonizing (get me! Twice in one sentence!) Our Villain that he forgets a rule of stories: twists and turns in the plot are our friends. This black-and-white portrayal is something that Oliver Stone’s been doing for twenty-plus years. It would be a good idea to have Mrs. Carmody come across as a strong, heroic character who snaps at some point and becomes the EE-vill Mrs. Carmody, or have her look like a zealot who turns out to have her heroic streak. Either way would’ve worked.
But in truth, the movie has no surprises, other than the revelation that Ollie’s wallet says Bad Motherf***er. One could predict nearly exactly what would happen the minute they opened the loading dock door, when Norton took a stroll, when the bugs’ stingers were pointed out, when Our Heroes lit out for the pharmacy, etc. The rest of the movie? Our Heroes cook up a half-assed idea to defend themselves or get out, the plan fails horribly — in large part due to Our Heroes’ incompetence (and they’re never called onto the carpet for it), and Mrs. Carmody continues to preach and draw recruits. Lather, rinse, and repeat for about 80 minutes of a 117 minute movie. That’s the story. All of it. King is partly to blame. While I liked the novella a lot more than this movie, it has many problems of its own, this being chief among them. But King was smart enough to have Our Heroes realize their mistake. Also, they made some progress (in a moment that the movie throws away entirely, Our Heroes figure out why them big beasties aren’t attacking the store: as long as the doors are closed, they can’t smell the people inside). And King Is smart enough to pepper the story with his trademark wise-ass quips until the late innings, when things have gotten really bad. Like I said, the movie kept some stuff in that it shouldn’t have, and it throws out stuff that would’ve helped.
The handling of Mrs. Carmody, coupled with the absense of any honest twists (and the fact that, let’s face it, this movie isn’t scary; disgusting, but not scary), would sink this film. But that’s not the worst of it.
The Mist is thuddingly heavy-handed. The film doesn’t allow a moment of humor to slip in, opting instead to be deadeningly serious. Someone should have told the filmmakers that humor isn’t just natural or appropriate in a movie like this, it’s needed. Imagine how much more of an impact the final act would have had, going all dark and serious, if we’d seen the characters try to keep panic at bay by making a joke about the fix they were in. Like I noted, King was smart enough to do this in the novella. Yep, this is Darabont’s doing, once again.
Here’s a shout-out to aspiring directors: in general, monster movies should be fun. Get serious late in the game if you must, get as dark as you like, but have a feeling of adventure early on. It’s a monster movie, not The Passion of Joan of Arc!
But the movie goes into new territory altogether with that God-awful ending. If you’ve seen Wayne’s World, you may remember that there was a false ending where everything went wrong for Wayne and Garth at the last minute. The world blew itself up around them (literally), and they wondered the wreckage, screaming, “WHY?! WHY?!” Freeze frame, and Wayne and Garth popped up in front of the image, looked at the camera, and basically said, “Dude, that ending sucked! Let’s try something else.”
The Mist does this for real.
Let me go ahead and give away the ending to the novella for ya. (If you don’t want it spoiled, skip down a paragraph). After seeing The Big Guy stride overhead, David and Company make their way to a hotel near the state line and find temporary safety in the lobby. David is able to find an AM radio (using the radio, which was done in the novella, is also taken out of the film, because if he’d turned the thing on, David would know before long that help was on the way). He fiddles with it for a long time, with no luck, then he hears a single word: Hartford. He doesn’t hear anything else after that, and he’s not even sure he heard right. But it gives him what he needs to keep going. He plans to find a way to siphon off gas for the car the next day (if they can step outside long enough) then make a desperate try for this theroetical safe haven. He gets up and goes to whisper two words into Billy’s ear: “One of them is Hartford. The other is hope.” There was something touching here: as bleak as the ending was, David hadn’t given up. The movie takes that hope, squashes it flat, then drives over it with a steamroller. Amazingly, since the movie’s release, King has stated that he likes the ending Darabont gave it, and he wishes he’d thought of it himself. My respect for King took a nosedive after hearing that.
I’ve asked myself why I get so worked up when talking about this thing. It may be because my blood tends to boil when I see wanton cruelty on screen, clearly put there for someone’s enjoyment. In her review for Freddy Got Fingered, Pip mentioned the repeated torture of an innocent kid, done as a joke. Joke or serious, it pisses me off. And I don’t mean, showing someone get hurt because they deserved it in some way, or showing someone going through an ordeal because it arises naturally from the story or character. I’m talking about things on screen which clue me in that the director has one serious sadistic streak.There’s a palpable sense that Darabont is taking immense joy in these characters’ misery.
Now, I’ve seen nihilistic movies that I liked a great deal. I’ve got a couple in my DVD collection, and I’m proud to have ‘em. A nihilistic movie can work, in my opinion, if it does one of three things. It can leave a ray of hope, however faint, that something good can come out of what’s gone on before. It can leave the impression that, with these characters and situations, this ending was inevitable. Finally, it can try to make a point. Even if that point is “sh!t happens,” it’s something.
What’s the point of The Mist? I don’t think it has anything to do with religion (or anti-religion) or politics. No, Darabont may well be trying to say that God is indeed a bloodthirsty asshole, never mind what Biker Dude thought.
Nice. Real nice.
Again, Frankie-boy goes too far. By giving us the eye-rolling co-inky-dink of having Redhead Buzzcut Lady just happening to go by at the end, he’s letting the audience know that he has put David and Friends through hell and killed off most of them, and he’s now shoving David’s (and the viewer’s) face in it.
In other words, Darabont is the one playing God. So what does that make him? One senses he had real glee in hurting these people; I started to wonder if Darabont enjoyed torturing small animals when he was a kid.
I know, I know, this has been a broadside attack on Frank Darabont. But I think he deserves it. This is his movie. He insisted on having this ending from the word go. One imagines that if the studio was willing to go with it, they’d give him just about anything he wanted as long as he stayed under budget.
So, the movie gave us a little good atmosphere, a good character in Ollie, a good song in “The Host of Seraphim”, and a way cool giant beastie.
As for the rest of it....
I’ve written several reviews on this message board. As cheesed off as I’ve been toward those masterpieces’ makers, I’ve never let my language get as salty as it did in this review. And I’ve never wanted to inflict harm on their directors.
Maybe I don’t have to get him with a right cross. Maybe I could just stare Darabont in the eye, list this movie’s many failings, put them all at his door, then say to Darabont something I’ve never wanted to say to any of the directors I’ve dissed before.
F*** you, Frank. F*** you very much. |
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Gristle McThornbody
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Germany
186 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2008 : 5:33:19 PM
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Well done, Brad.
And I like Olive Loaf.
"Hi, I'm Bob Evil!" |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2008 : 7:08:06 PM
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Damn! If it's as you describe it, then you deserve a Bronze Star for having sat through it all the way.
Now I feel bad about those four bucks. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2008 : 7:53:03 PM
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Thank you, thank you.
Don't feel bad, Food; I did get a free rental, remember. And that one wasn't a waste of time or money.
Gristle, you like that olive loaf stuff? You're tougher than I am. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2008 : 9:40:22 PM
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One thing I forgot to mention in the review. Ken Begg stated once that his problem with the run of Outer Limits episodes a few years back was that they took the tone of "we're screwed, no matter what we do." That's the tone The Mist takes. One feels that if David and Company had stayed in that land rover and waited, the monsters would've attacked and et them, leaving David alive... and then the military would've shown up. Or if David had tried to walk Redhead Buzzcut Lady home, they would've got et. Basically, one gets the ugly feeling Darabont stacked the cards against Our Heroes (such as they were) and then dealt from the bottom of the deck.
And now, pardon me while I rub egg off my face. I've always considered the word "nihilistic" to basically mean "hopeless" or "bleak." I looked it up a few days ago. D'oh!
Anyway, change "nihilistic" to "bleak and hopeless", but I'd say "nihilistic" (addictive sound it has, no?) is a good word to describe this movie. And that's not a compliment.
Okay, maybe I'll FINALLY be done yakkin' about this accursed thing. |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2008 : 11:24:42 PM
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Hey, finally got around to this- good job! Sounds like you nailed it. As a non-Christian I have no particular personal stake in matters of how they are portrayed in films but I find this sort of obnoxious stereotyping and straw-man treatment just as offensive as you do and I seriously doubt I could make it through this. Not to mention the films other obvious weaknesses. Not least of which is the ludicrous premise the whole story is built on. Blech.
Now contrast that with the recent Rambo film which I thought presented a genuinely interesting set of Christian characters- obviously good well meaning moral people, about to have their Utopian New testament ideals of non-violence challenged in a shockingly direct way; totally unprepared for the naked evil they were sailing headlong into. I thought Sly really scored on that one.
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 06/09/2008 : 11:39:57 AM
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Good review Brad. You hit the target pretty well. Your point about the Harden character needing to have something that made people attracted to her is absolutely correct. One thing I thought of is that she should have thrown a bucket of cows blood or something out the broken window and that that would have drawn off the creatures. Then she could have easily segued into the need for expiation.
BTW, I was at the new Gettysburg visitors center last week and Harden has a small voice acting part in the new movie they are showing. The bad news is that the movie fails to mention much about the battle and spend an inordinate amount of time discussing slavery and civil rights.
- Si desea pulse 2 para español, encontrar un país diferente. - |
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The Rev. D.D.
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
203 Posts |
Posted - 06/13/2008 : 11:58:39 AM
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Wow. What a complete abomination of the original novella this sounds like.
At least I know about it before seeing it. I'm not sure I want to see it now, but if I do, at least I know what to expect.
You did an excellent job of comparing the novella to the movie, and that's what convinces me I want nothing to do with this.
I thought the novella's ending was one of the better "hanging" endings I'd read: as you said, bleak but with a touching bit of hope there. Very nice.
The movie's ending...I think if I'd seen it unprepared, I'd have reached the levels of disgust and rage that the ending of Nightmare on Elm Street provoked in me. Might even have surpassed Saw's denouement.
I don't think The Big Guy and the gore is enough to get me to see this. (I can find that song elsewhere without it.)
I'm certainly not going to waste money or a Netflix slot on it, that's for damn sure.
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Thanks for the warning, Brad. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 06/13/2008 : 5:31:45 PM
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I wonder sometimes if I'm not being too biased, or being unfair. Certainly, you can spin any movie whichever way you want. Someone could review a genuine classic and make it sound bad. I may catch hell a year from now from someone who saw it on HBO and ended up liking it. Ah, hell, let 'em come.
A few thoughts since writing the review:
I found my old tape of the radio play and gave it a listen. Acting was good, especially Bill Sadler and Dann Florek. Action scenes didn't work. The scene where Our Heroes see The Big Guy was excellent as always. The big problem, once again, was Mrs. Carmody. I just don't buy her converting the whole damn store in less than forty-eight hours.
She kind of a perfect storm: the absolute worst-case scenario. She could've kinda worked, if, say, they'd given some expo that she was a local church leader who was respected by a lot of people in town, giving her some credibility to start with. Better yet, make her a cult leader who has followers already in the store. Anything, really, would have helped. Again, this is the biggest stumbling block in the novella. Mostly, the movie was pretty faithful in content to the book, but the tone was all wrong. The book knew how to have fun with it. (My own idea would be, ironically, to do something that may make Stephen King go ballistic. Have Mrs. Carmody build her base early on, then have her screw the pooch big time, do some soul-searching, then finally come up with a good sacrifice: herself. She runs out ahead of Our Heroes, turning herself into a decoy so they can get in the land rover and go for help.)
Here's something that was in the book and the play, but not in the movie. David promises to get Billy a comic book when he goes to the drugstore. This was in the movie, but it was done so quickly you might miss it. In the book, David manages to get a comic, and he takes it back with him. What comic books does he get? The Incredible Hulk and (gotta love this) Spider-Man. Nice bit of gallows humor there.
Let's see, another thought. Put another mark against Frank Darabont. He didn't include The Big Guy in his original script. The FX crew had to talk him into putting it back in. Dum-dum.
Sardu, while I had some problems with Rambo, overall I think Sly did pretty well. I did like the idea of the head minister not realizing what he was getting into, and even becoming high-handed and arrogant with Rambo after Rambo saved his hide, then (if memory serves) clubbing one of his captors to death at the end, and you see the resigned look on his face. He knows now he's just as capable of violence as anyone else, for better or worse.
Warning: I may turn into a whirlwind of writin' pretty soon. I'm gonna post a review that I wrote a few years back that got purged, then I have a few more movies in mind. One will be a Movie I Like, and two.... won't. Those latter two may be relatively short. |
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The Mist
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