REVIEW - The Mist

I had heard some cool stuff about the latest Stephen King cinematic adaptation, Frank Darabont’s The Mist, but the winter holiday film schedule was a bit too tightly packed and I missed seeing it on the big screen. Which is a bit of a shame, because it was a pretty decent movie. It's a perfectly decent DVD, though.

Thomas Jane, a guy I’m slowly gaining respect for, plays an artist who goes to the supermarket and ends up having a really bad day. I’m not going to get into what happens, except to say that there are creatures and there is blood. There are some other great actors in the film like Andre Braugher and Marcia Gay Harden, who plays the local crazy lady. This is the first film I’ve seen Toby Jones in, and just so you know, if you see that Toby Jones is in a movie you might want to check it out because the guy is the real deal, folks. He is great. Jeffrey DeMunn and William Sadler, two Darabont vets, also perform admirably.

There’s a lot of solid work going on here, considering this is ultimately a b-movie. And make no mistake, The Mist is totally a b-movie on purpose, with all the requisite scares and occasional buckets of blood. It’s just an incredibly well-crafted b-movie, with some pretty good CG work. But the script constantly reminds us of what the deal is, what with people repeatedly using the title of the film all the time. “What is this mist?” “What are we going to do about this mist?” “Who will stop this mist?” etc. It was pretty awesome.

The film is as much about the titular mist outside the supermarket as it is the tense, frightened people inside the supermarket, and in true King fashion how sometimes humanity can be the worst problem to deal with, certainly worse than that barbed tentacle that worms its way into the loading dock…

For those that have read the short story, the film ends a bit differently. Possibly controversially so. It’s a pretty crazy ending, I will say that. It’s pretty messed up.

The DVD was pretty good, Frank Darabont has another one of his entertaining and extremely informative commentaries. There is also a short featurette about the artist Drew Struzan, and how his work is basically the awesomest stuff. I am told that the 2-disc set has a black & white version of the film. This sounds like a very good idea, actually, and I hope someday to check it out.

So if you want to see a movie where an old lady makes a flamethrower out of an aerosol can, The Mist might be for you.