By Brandon Nolta
Stephen King film adaptations are a dicey lot. King’s a prolific fella, with more than 50 novels under his belt and two or three times that number of short stories, and the law of averages says some of those won’t be worth the paper they’re on. Regardless, Hollywood loves to use his work, as he tends to write with a cinematic POV. Unfortunately, many of those adaptations REALLY suck. Many directors have foundered on his work; John Carpenter and Stanley Kubrick, for example, both produced crap based on King’s work, and those guys rock. There are, however, two directors who have managed high-profile success with King more than once: Rob Reiner and Frank Darabont. This brings me to Darabont’s take on King’s 1985 novella THE MIST.
A storm has just blown through a small Maine town, blowing down trees and knocking out power everywhere. David Drayton (Thomas Jane), a commercial artist, heads into town with his son Billy (Nathan Gamble) and snooty attorney neighbor Brent (Andre Braugher) to pick up supplies. While in the supermarket, a strange mist blows in from the nearby lake and shrouds the town in an eerily deep fog. But it’s not just any mist; there are creatures from another world out there, things that are carnivorous and hostile to the extreme. The people trapped inside have to come to grips with what’s outside, but as nerves fray, Drayton and friends come to fear the people inside more, embodied in the apocalyptic rantings of Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), whose faith is turning more bloodthirsty by the moment. For Drayton, only he and a deceptively meek assistant manager (Toby Jones) stand between his son and a mob looking for sacrifice.
Darabont, whose screenplay stays pretty faithful to the novella, made a wise choice in hiring camera crews from THE SHIELD, which Darabont has worked on. Having two crews used to TV verité work simultaneously gives the film a more realistic feel, which grounds the fantastical elements and give them more punch. Working in such cramped quarters lends the production an intimacy that helps drive home the mounting despair and dread that makes the movie fly. Sure, fanged tentacles and gargantuan crab things are scary, but in Mrs. Carmody, who Harden invests with as much humanity as the cartoonish character allows, the audience gets to see real evil.
Nobody goes to a horror movie for the acting, but the cast acquits themselves nicely. Jane, who many might recognize from THE PUNISHER, turns in solid work as a normal guy in abnormal circumstances, who uses his wits to try and keep his son safe. Sternhagen is also on point, as a teacher who follows Teddy Roosevelt’s injunction to speak softly but carry a big stick … or bug spray. The real surprise is Toby Jones, the English sprite who disappears into a Maine store manager packing more steely nerve than anyone suspects. Playing the Sam to Jane’s Frodo, Jones makes the audience buy that this unassuming fellow has the brass to save—or take—lives.
It should be pretty clear that THE MIST rocked, but Darabont’s biggest triumph deserves a mention: the ending. King closed out the original with an ambiguous resolution that fit the tone without tying things up. It was a good ending. Darabont’s is better. King has said, in fact, that he would have gone with Darabont’s had he thought of it. Hell, I’m impressed that Darabont got the studio to sign off on it. Few mainstream films would have the balls to go out this way. I’d love to talk about it, but it would ruin the film. Here’s what I can tell you: Go see THE MIST. If you like horror movies, tense dramas or even just parables about humanity that happen to have three-foot acid-spitting spiders, THE MIST will not disappoint. Why are you still reading? Go see it!