Horror Movie Review: The Mist, Stephen King

Yes I have been slack.  This is what happens when I don't have deadlines so now every Sunday I am going to try to post something.

To that end I was going to do a review on The Dead of Winter by Jack Night but then realised I was only halfway through...

So instead you get The Mist, a movie adaptation of the short story by Stephen King.

Are those giant worms or tentacles?  Who cares RUN DUDE RUN!
(Always wanted to say that)

The premise of The Mist is a fairly simple one: a group of people are trapped in a country supermarket after a thick mist floods into town and there is something in the mist. 

The story moves quickly to this situation.  A wild storm has swept through town damaging homes and forcing people to get supplies from the supermarket.  Some soldiers are called up to the military base nearby and then an air raid siren begins as the deep, soupy mist rolls in blocking vision from the supermarket windows.

"There is something in the mist" cries a man and the doors are locked.

The people who end up trapped in the supermarket make the movie interesting and if anything they provide the bulk of the horror - although there certainly is something in the mist as they quickly learn.  A mix of locals and "out of towners" in the supermarket is a combustible mix as the stress of the situation begins to take its toll and the differences between people become rapidly pronounced.  

Normally Stephen Kings work has a long buildup with a lot of character development but in the case of The Mist we learn about the characters only as the story develops and that's kind of refreshing - and completely appropriate in generating a feeling that the viewer is an outsider and things are moving out of control.  

The main protagonist is David Drayton, who is not a local and not an "out of towner".  This is illustrated early on when David tells one of the handymen in the supermarket that opening a roller door is stupid because there is something outside and gets told so shut up because they don't care that he is a "big shot artist with connections in New York".    At the same time David's neighbour  a successful lawyer, distrusts him because he thinks he is a local and doesn't believe him when he says he saw something saying that David and the locals are just trying to make him look the fool.

As a character David Drayton is fairly simple.  His son is with him, and the driving force behind all of his actions - he left his wife at home but doesn't seem even remotely concerned about her and never thinks to pick up the phone and give her a call.  It makes him fairly two dimensional but its appropriate to the setting; he is "the good father" and "the voice of reason".

The other major character, and the one that had me grating my teeth but in a good way, is Mrs Carmody.  Mrs Carmody is the local religious fanatic and the mist, and monsters in the mist, give her the perfect opportunity to preach the end of days and get a congregation of scared people converted to her personal religion.  She is a nasty piece of work - early on one of the other characters tells her if she ever needs a friend she just needs to ask and Mrs Carmody tells her she has a friend in god and if she ever needs a friend like her she will squat down and shit her out.  

Again Mrs Carmody is a simple archetype and we don't get much depth to her.  She is simply a fanatic who appears to want to use the situation to get her own cult off the ground (perhaps because she is lonely as a number of characters early in the piece identify her as the local loony). 

Now there are a number of other characters in the movie but its the interplay between Drayton and Carmody, and ultimately their factions, that its about.  Oh there are the monsters in the mist and surviving them is important but this is clearly a journey into how badly people turn when they are trapped and scared not just a monster movie.  

People.  Scary as hell.

Overall I enjoyed the movie and its one which has gone into our collection.  Its tense, generates a sufficient suspension of disbelief to allow the things in the mist to feel real - they are genuinely alien and menacing in their own right - and has the right kind of twists especially towards the end.  Worth watching in fact if only for the ending which felt... right. 

Funnily enough it also has two actresses from The Walking Dead in it too - Laurie Holden and Melissa McBride.  I cant help but feel their characters in this movie may have put them in the front running for the roles in that TV series too!

Once I finish The Dead of Winter I will probably read The Mist just to see if the book is better and will pop a little addendum to this post once I have done that. Otherwise next Sunday, The Dead of Winter gets reviewed.

Regardless I promise, oh two readers, that there will be more regular updates.