The Mist
Directed by Frank Darabont
The most annoying performance of the year is in our midst, and it’s in The Mist. Frank Darabont’s adaptation of the Stephen King short story about goofy-looking monsters that invade an isolated town features Marcia Gay Harden as a haranguing prophet of doom so obnoxiously over-the-top that she makes Jim Jones look like Jesse Jackson. Harden’s Mrs. Carmondy would bring the whole production down if it weren’t already flawed for other reasons.
The main set of the movie finds a handful of survivors holed up in a local grocery store when a mysterious haze overtakes the town and eerie critters slink out of the darkness to devour anyone dumb enough to venture outside. David (Thomas Jayne), the macho family man poised to bring order to the impromptu gathering, gradually loses the ability to keep the crowd at bay in order to cobble together an escape strategy. Like Matthew Fox’s Jack on ABC castaway drama “Lost,” David gets the hero role simply because he’s bland enough to anchor the story while all the supporting characters unload their anxieties. Unlike “Lost,” however, the loose cannon-types in The Mist aren’t validated by their bizarre quirks, since we aren’t given the opportunity to sympathize with them. David, bold and boring, knows they’ll only survive the experience through cooperation. Everyone else remains poised to defy that pragmatism.
Fine, it’s a horror movie—the genre with fans used to excusing paper-thin situations for the sake of calculated chills and violence assembled with care. (Ladies and gentlemen, I give you torture porn.) But it’s also a Stephen King story, implying a narrative where supernatural phenomena often symbolize the dark regions of the human mind. King’s The Shining, to take the obvious example, tackles alcoholism first and foremost; the ghost story provides a menacing frame for the psychological struggle at hand.
The Mist tries to use that same hook with unsettling echoes of the paradigm established by the myth explored in United 93—a handful of stragglers must bind together to defy an unexpected menace—but, like the silly flying and tentacle-baring things that show up throughout the plot, these people don’t appear real enough to be worth our time. Which brings us back to the problem of Mrs. Carmondy.
Declaring herself a vessel of god, she leads a renegade operation in the embattled grocery store to place her in a position of power. More than the creatures from another dimension (none of which look very convincing), she’s the real villain of the movie, inciting violence with ideological demands for religious loyalty. It’s not a testament to Harden’s acting strengths that her crazed demeanor drives viewers nuts. A good villain can offer an unnerving spectacle, but Mrs. Carmondy is written as a tempestuous one-note stereotype. Darabont, a King fanatic whose directorial career almost exclusively relies on the literary behemoth’s accomplishments, with his adaptations of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, sticks close to King’s thematic turf, but he confuses schlock for the cadences of horror. It’s like Dostoyevsky being remade by the Farrelly Brothers.
I would be poised to accept The Mist for what it is if the fun factor were situated within the suspense, along the lines of Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, the mood never balances out. We’re asked to believe that the end of the world is simultaneously tragic and cheesy. The formula falls apart—not with a whimper, but with a bang.
Directed by Frank Darabont
The most annoying performance of the year is in our midst, and it’s in The Mist. Frank Darabont’s adaptation of the Stephen King short story about goofy-looking monsters that invade an isolated town features Marcia Gay Harden as a haranguing prophet of doom so obnoxiously over-the-top that she makes Jim Jones look like Jesse Jackson. Harden’s Mrs. Carmondy would bring the whole production down if it weren’t already flawed for other reasons.
The main set of the movie finds a handful of survivors holed up in a local grocery store when a mysterious haze overtakes the town and eerie critters slink out of the darkness to devour anyone dumb enough to venture outside. David (Thomas Jayne), the macho family man poised to bring order to the impromptu gathering, gradually loses the ability to keep the crowd at bay in order to cobble together an escape strategy. Like Matthew Fox’s Jack on ABC castaway drama “Lost,” David gets the hero role simply because he’s bland enough to anchor the story while all the supporting characters unload their anxieties. Unlike “Lost,” however, the loose cannon-types in The Mist aren’t validated by their bizarre quirks, since we aren’t given the opportunity to sympathize with them. David, bold and boring, knows they’ll only survive the experience through cooperation. Everyone else remains poised to defy that pragmatism.
Fine, it’s a horror movie—the genre with fans used to excusing paper-thin situations for the sake of calculated chills and violence assembled with care. (Ladies and gentlemen, I give you torture porn.) But it’s also a Stephen King story, implying a narrative where supernatural phenomena often symbolize the dark regions of the human mind. King’s The Shining, to take the obvious example, tackles alcoholism first and foremost; the ghost story provides a menacing frame for the psychological struggle at hand.
The Mist tries to use that same hook with unsettling echoes of the paradigm established by the myth explored in United 93—a handful of stragglers must bind together to defy an unexpected menace—but, like the silly flying and tentacle-baring things that show up throughout the plot, these people don’t appear real enough to be worth our time. Which brings us back to the problem of Mrs. Carmondy.
Declaring herself a vessel of god, she leads a renegade operation in the embattled grocery store to place her in a position of power. More than the creatures from another dimension (none of which look very convincing), she’s the real villain of the movie, inciting violence with ideological demands for religious loyalty. It’s not a testament to Harden’s acting strengths that her crazed demeanor drives viewers nuts. A good villain can offer an unnerving spectacle, but Mrs. Carmondy is written as a tempestuous one-note stereotype. Darabont, a King fanatic whose directorial career almost exclusively relies on the literary behemoth’s accomplishments, with his adaptations of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, sticks close to King’s thematic turf, but he confuses schlock for the cadences of horror. It’s like Dostoyevsky being remade by the Farrelly Brothers.
I would be poised to accept The Mist for what it is if the fun factor were situated within the suspense, along the lines of Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, the mood never balances out. We’re asked to believe that the end of the world is simultaneously tragic and cheesy. The formula falls apart—not with a whimper, but with a bang.
