You can always tell when someone has translated Stephen King’s material correctly because of one simple element – the dialogue. Typically, in a Hollywood-style film, when someone has taken liberty with Stephen King’s ideas, the dialogue is short, and pointed, and there are more visuals than dialogue. Most people are under the belief that showing is better than telling. While The Shining is an absolute masterpiece of a film by Stanley Kubrick, it was altered considerably from its source, and it loses the essence of what made it truly frightening – the dialogue. I know what you’re thinking, Kubrick’s script and execution were frightening enough and the horror was properly done. You’re not wrong, but King has a way of making dialogue paint a picture and uses it to build his characters while giving them an incredible amount of depth. We get a sprinkle of that in The Shining but are left with more questions than answers, and more art than not. Most people in the industry trying to make King’s novels into a movie make this mistake, which has been fine at times (The Shining) but mostly wrong (Dark Tower, Firestarter, Silver Bullet, etc.). It’s tough to make a Stephen King novel into a movie when you think you know better than King.
But then there is Frank Darabont’s The Mist.
The Mist is a film that retains the character-building dialogue, the uncertainty of a horror situation, and the pointed essence of Stephen King’s original material, while still bringing the Hollywood visuals. It’s one of those rare films that takes its source, follows it closely, and delivers a meaningful, unsettling experience that doesn’t pull its punches, even when it should.
In other words, it’s my new favorite Halloween movie.
Official Synopsis
When a mysterious mist, and the supernatural creatures within, falls across their town in the wake of a violent storm, a group of local citizens must fend for themselves while trapped inside a local supermarket. They soon begin to realize that the real danger may not be from the monsters outside but from tension and mistrust within.
Fear is a helluva thing
The Mist starts easily enough, as David Drayton (Thomas Jane) is trying to figure out how to remove a tree that was knocked down by a storm on his property. The tree has done some considerable damage, but nothing catastrophic. His neighbor, Brent Norton (Andre Braugher) is suffering through the same type of damage from his tree, though his situation is more inconvenient as it has destroyed his only means of transportation, his car. Sympathetic to his neighbor, whom David has had some court-history with from the past, David and his young son give Brent a ride to the local supermarket to show he’s willing to forgive, forget, and move on. Not a bad way to start a story, especially with its subtle details about a bad storm that was of ‘epic proportion’ to the local area.
While at the supermarket, several personalities show up, all brought to this one place by the horrible storm the night before. Each person has their own story, plight in life, and way of living that has been disrupted in one way or another. The community is close, up in each other’s business, and also hiding quite a bit underneath the surface. And all of that is ready to break through the seams with a simple push, and that push happens thanks to Dan Miller.
A community man named Dan Miller (Jeffrey DeMunn) shows up to the supermarket hurt, screaming about ‘the mist’ and how something is in it, and begging the shopping clerks to close the doors to the establishment otherwise they risk death from unknown entities. At first, no one takes him seriously, but things begin to happen. Military personnel are seen racing down the street, and a thick mist rolls in covering the supermarket and making it almost impossible to see what is going on outside. The moment is capped off by someone trying to get to their car only to be taken and torn apart, which sets the tone for the rest of the story which is driven by uncertainty and fear.
This is some old-school storytelling at its best, as it’s playing off characters and dialogue, while not immediately showing you what it has hidden in the background. The film plays off your imagination, building up that fear through character development, dialogue, and uncertainty, a technique that Alfred Hitchcock perfected with his storytelling, where not knowing what is causing the horror is worse than seeing it, where the true horror lies within the viewer’s imagination.
The setup in act one does all this beautifully, as you’re there with the characters, settling in for the ride, and getting sprinkles of information with them about what this thing beyond the confines of the supermarket might be and why it is doing what it is doing. You honestly couldn’t start the movie off in a better fashion, as it hooks you in and doesn’t let you go, and keeps you hanging on for the big reveal. All of this is driven through dialogue from the characters that help build fear and tension while also constructing a competent three-act narrative that gives you all the information that you want without much effort in trying to figure it out. This is pure Stephen King and respectful to the book from wince it came.
Now, the second act begins with a more urgent tone, where the characters you have met in the first act, have begun to add meaningful depth to their personas. As people are starting to panic and begin to understand their situation, we now see the human side of them, the true side. David’s issues with Brent, and their court case, were a lot messier than what was revealed. While we don’t get the full depth of their problems, the fear of dying digs up their true feelings of hatred and distrust within their tightly-knit community. Other people start to mix into the story such as Ollie Weeks, a bitter and broken grocery clerk who is constantly beaten down by his boss at work, and feelings he breaks free from when death is on the line. We are also introduced to a religious fanatic named Mrs. Carmody, someone who commands the room as she warns that what is happening is because of the ‘end times’ and God’s plans. While the horror is revealed sparingly in a garage scene, and it’s grotesque and unsettling how vicious the creatures are in the mist, the true horror comes to life with how the situation brings fears to the surface and reveals the nature of humankind amid crises. The second act drives home that the true monster lives within rather than outside.
The second act has a lot of dialogue, and it works. You can see immediately that this isn’t a typical Hollywood film, which is usually driven by visual horror. While jump scares and body parts are defining pieces in a typical horror film, this one goes in a different direction, especially in the second act. It depends on character development through dirty details, choosing to focus on slowly giving dimension to each player involved and making them the monster, rather than revealing what lies waiting on the outside of the supermarket. The viewer is forced to become more afraid of how people are handling and not of what is trying to get into the supermarket. Maybe in 2007, when the movie was released, this wasn’t believable, but after going through a pandemic and seeing how people react in a crisis, this movie is far more real than it should be. Fear drives people to become who they are, as the film shows, and the second act spends a great deal of time bouncing between people and giving them the spotlight to show that off. It’s a beautiful second act, even if by Hollywood standards it is long-winded. The only reason I mention the long-winded part is that hardly any films translated from a Stephen King novel have been allowed to soak too long in King’s structure and delivery. The Mist is the exception. Frank Darabont, who probably had some power at this point to do whatever the hell he wanted thanks to The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile’s success, does King right by capturing everything created from the novel. He beautifully captures the believable horror of human nature through dialogue and proper character development.
The third act of this story is the portion of the movie where you just hold your hands up and enjoy the rollercoaster ride’s last bit of climatic hills. The outside monsters are finally revealed at this point, and the ‘great escape’, as the monsters have finally found a way into the supermarket, begins. The escape isn’t what you might expect from our hero’s journey, nor is the ending that comes with it. While I won’t tell you how this movie ends, I will say that everyone gets what they deserve in the supermarket but maybe not outside of it. Regardless, The Mist shows us the horrid nature of human beings and what they become in the middle of a terrible crisis. It demonstrates the panic that takes over our minds and the bumbling decision-making that comes out of that panic. This isn’t a typical horror story that you would find nowadays, like what you would see in the Evil Dead series, rather it’s a different type of horror that sears into your brain and makes you think how terrible humans can be when we need each other the most. In a sense, this is a believable type of horror and one that hits too close to the mark when you’re trying to break away and enjoy a movie experience. Those are the better type of horror stories in my opinion, and The Mist is one of the better-written, directed, and acted films that lets its Stephen King side go for a full ride.
Four discs and features
I hadn’t fully grasped how popular this film was until Lionsgate announced a four-disc release for this month. The amount of effort they put into this release to make it unique and worth your time is phenomenal.
Here’s what to expect:
- Black and White version of the film.
- Audio commentary with Frank Darabont and Denise Huth
- Deleted scenes with commentary
- Conversation with Stephen King and Frank Darabont
- Bonus material
There’s a lot here and the B/W film version adds solid visual drama and value to this well-crafted horror experience. It certainly makes it a different tale by adding some old-school 50s horror flavor to its delivery. I wish that more films did this. Anyway, this is worth the price of admission.
