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The Mist

3 stars out of 5.0

It’s a strange kettle of fish when the latest film from the beloved Shawshank Redemption team of writer-director Frank Darabont and original author Stephen King is left languishing on the shelf for six months, then released against a couple of blockbusters.

Such is the fate of The Mist, a rather anti-summer movie, and not only because of the weather. Reviews in the States last year were scarcely engaged and business was poor. Yet this doomsday horror movie emerges as one of the better surprises of the year, an old fashioned chiller made with real thought and attention. In places it’s as effective as anything Darabont has done.

David Drayton (Thomas Jane, who holds the screen effortlessly here) is with his son at the local supermarket when the fog rolls in, and with it a terrified local, bleeding and yelling how there’s something nasty in the mist.

The market is busy – people are restocking after a big storm – and an alarm cuts through the building like a chill. It sounds like a bomb warning; the sound you might hear in the event of an attack. A man rushes out to his car but no sooner has he been swallowed up by the mist than he lets rip a blood-curdling scream. Nobody’s eager to follow in his footsteps.

As is traditional in this kind of story (see also, The Happening) the phones are dead, so the good people of Castle Rock are on their own. Curiously they’re not much concerned that the mist itself might be toxic – surely the most rationale explanation? It’s only when a giant, grasping tentacle slides into the loading bay that they begin to appreciate the true nature of the threat – and even then, those shoppers who missed the show have a hard time buying it.

Never a filmmaker to run when he can walk, Darabont lets the horror build through unease, incredulity and mounting suggestion. Cannily, he keeps Mark Isham’s score in his back pocket, and reaches for it sparingly. In one of his best bits, a volunteer ties a rope around his waist and ventures into the unknown. Darabont stays fixed in the store and lets the pull on the rope tell the story. Pure suspense.

When the monsters do reveal themselves the CGI work is seamless and properly repellent, but don’t worry yourself about where they come from or why. Darabont’s focus is always squarely on the humans, who quickly splinter into competing factions reflecting their own racial, class and educational prejudices. The mental mist that clouds everyone’s judgment is the real theme of the story: denial, frustration, despair, and enough reckless courage to keep the body count ticking over. When it comes to scary, Marcia Gay Harden’s Born Again Christian is fearsome enough to convince Drayton and his clique to take their chances with the beasties.

The most unusual bonus on the US region 1 DVD of The Mist (it’s been out for a while) is a black and white version of the film. That’s a reflection of how influenced Darabont has been by old Hollywood – he’s a real classicist. In this case the subtle 1940s horrors of director Val Lewton (Cat People) are probably the most important influence – along with the atomic “creature features” of the 1950s, like Them!

Unlike, say, Robert Rodriguez, Darabont takes his horror straight. There isn’t a trace of post-modern irony to be found lurking in The Mist. Indeed, it’s earnest to a fault. Harden’s religious nut hijacks the movie for a while, and a belated attempt to flesh out the characters of a soldier and his sweetheart feels like an afterthought. Even so, these flaws suggest that Darabont is trying to say something about the fundamentalist/militarist mindset holding sway in parts of the US these days.

I don’t want to spoil the ending, but at the same time it’s so remarkable I can’t ignore it altogether. I’ll say this: The Mist would be worth seeing just to experience the last five minutes. Mind you, this is also likely the reason for the movie’s bleak commercial fortunes.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com

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