1950s horror merges with modern fears in cautionary tale
Mutant bugs!
Religious nut jobs!
Face-ripping tentacles!
Stupid humans!
Man, have I been waiting a long time for this: a thriller combining a classic 1950s Armageddon creature feature with the personal horror of a Stephen King novella.
"The Mist" not only scares the bejeebers out of viewers as an old-school monster movie, it offers a subtext so ambiguously rich that it could be interpreted as a veiled warning about the dangers of global warming.
If the mysterious mist that descends upon a small Maine town serves as a metaphor for global warming, then the people trapped inside a supermarket become a microcosm of humanity.
Faced with a calamity of apocalyptic proportions, some people succumb to fear and scape-goating. Others rise to the occasion with their humanity and reason intact.
But in the literal end (added to King's original story by director Frank Darabont), "The Mist" provides us with a clammy, cautionary moral worthy of a Jesse Jackson axiom: Keep hope alive!
First the emergency sirens wail. Then Dan Miller (Jeffrey De Munn) races into the local grocery store, his eyes wild, his face bloodied.
"There's something in the mist!" he shouts. Instantly, a rolling mist pounces upon the parking lot and the supermarket, trapping a cross-section of the community out getting supplies after a nasty thunderstorm.
David (Thomas Jane), a good-looking and well-grounded movie poster artist, calms his young son Billy (Nathan Gamble). David suspects something deadly and unknown lurks in the mist.
His attorney neighbor Brent (Andre Braugher), possessed of an unhealthy dose of skepticism, thinks it's a sick joke against him for being an "outsider."
Even after monstrous tentacles snatch a bag boy in the back room and leave a grim piece of physical evidence, Brent remains unconvinced.
"There's nothing out there!" Brent bellows.
All bets are off when a fearless shopper goes to his car and comes back without his top half. Panic ensues, especially when the store manager Ollie (Toby Jones) points out that the front of the store is plate glass!
"The Mist" has big, mean, flying bugs and bigger, meaner flying bugs that attack the store at night because stupid humans don't know that lights attract bugs.
The monsters in the mist turn out to be pussycats compared to humans under pressure. Abruptly, "The Mist" becomes "Lord of the Spiders From Another Dimension."
Marcia Gay Harden has a field day pumping her character, the twitchy Mrs. Carmody, way beyond its hellfire and brimstone religious zealot stereotype.
"The bill is due and it must be paid!" she shrieks to her followers in aisles 2, 3, 4 and 5. "Now do you believe?" she asks after each mounting disaster. Soon, she develops a fervid following of citizens willing to do anything she asks, even blood sacrifices.
Under Darabont's tight, fun direction, "The Mist" cheerfully echoes the divisive subtext of "Night of the Living Dead" and the social cannibalism of "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" episode from TV's "Twilight Zone."
Darabont, directing his third King adaptation (along with "The Green Mile" and "The Shawshank Redemption") goes a little overboard, like when people reinforce the windows with 60 kajillion bags of dog food. (Good thing the store carries 10 times the annual product output of Ralston Purina.)
Costing a paltry $17 million, "The Mist" boasts excellent effects, yet still maintains the brisk, thrilling feel of a slam-bam cheapie horror picture involving radiation and genetic mutations.
However, I disagree with King, who said during a Monday Web cast interview, "Anybody who reveals the last five minutes of this film should be hung from their necks until dead."
Way too generous, Steve.
"The Mist"
3 1/2 stars out of four
Opens today
Thomas Jane as David
Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Carmody
Laurie Holden as Amanda
Nathan Gamble as Billy
Written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the novella by Stephen King. Produced by Frank Darabont and Liz Glotzer. An MGM release. Rated R (violence, language, gore) Running time: 125 minutes.