Humanity Gets Lost in the Fog

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The New York Sun

The fact that “The Mist” cracks the two-hour barrier, at a time when most horror movies struggle to stitch together enough superficial jump-cuts to crack 80 minutes, should suggest that Frank Darabont’s new film has more than just a few silly scares on its mind. And though it takes far too long to get to that more sober, serious place — leaping beyond a routine horror formula with a healthy dose of “Twilight Zone”-caliber what-if hypothesizing — the film’s final few minutes are genuinely haunting and provocative.

The terror here isn’t so much caused by the wafting clouds of white mist, which merely serve as the kindling that, when present, bring this tale of anxiety, anger, and antipathy to a high boil. There’s clearly an interest, in both script and visualization, of something deeper than superficial scares. In fact, as they talk about the movie later, no doubt many audiences will hardly be discussing the mist at all, affected less by this film’s paranormal evils than by those evils originating within the minds and spirits of its human characters.

In an almost Hitchcockian approach, 90% of “The Mist,” which is based on the novel by Stephen King, takes place in a single location: a supermarket in rural Maine, set in one of those summer villages where the townies must consort on weekends with the out-of-towners. Both groups come together one morning after a freak thunderstorm the previous night has thrown trees into people’s homes, torn down the town’s electrical poles, and apparently unleashed an endless sea of mist that no one sees coming until it’s a few yards away.

David Drayton (Thomas Jane) is a year-round resident of the town who has regular disagreements with his weekend neighbor, Brent (Andre Braugher), a powerful man of the law who travels up regularly from the city in his new luxury car (now crushed by a tree thanks to the storm). David, by contrast, is a painter, the sort of cerebral left-brainer whom the townies look down upon as an effete snob.

Without electricity, and with his studio lying in ruins, David takes his son Billy (Nathan Gamble) and a stranded Brent into town, determined to stock up for the long, dark days ahead. It’s here where the mist makes its first appearance, announced by a bloodied, frantic local who barrels into the store, points back through the windows, and bellows, “Something in the mist!” Just what exactly is out there, seemingly poised to strike, is not really the point of the film, though Mr. Darabont can’t seem to help himself from staging at least one sneak attack that relies on what must be the worst special effects of the year.

Instead, the film is far more interested in the effect that the presence of this persistent menace has on the people inside the store, especially in the way the group descends into panic as the hours become days. On one end of the spectrum is David, the pleasant everyman whose only concern involves getting home to his wife and keeping his son safe. Leading another constituency is Jim (William Sadler), a blue-collar mechanic whose initial certainty that there is nothing out in the mist gradually devolves into crippling fear as the situation becomes dire. Yet another group is led by Brent, who dismisses all this backwater talk of monsters in the mist as sheer silliness.

The real wild card, though is Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), the belligerent, antisocial religious fanatic who spends half the movie as the town’s resident cook before emerging as the reactionary pillar of conviction to whom the others, all but quaking in their boots, turn for answers. As the days tick by, the power balance inside the store shifts among these leaders, and bit by bit, a growing number of people defect, abandoning David and his pragmatic attempt to find a way out in favor of congregating around Mrs. Carmody. She starts by quoting the Book of Revelation, but soon enough is talking about Abraham and the sacrifice of his only son to appease a vengeful God, and eventually she blames this misty punishment on sinners like David.

Things become terrifying when mob rule is unleashed and an army of scared, angry, bloodthirsty extremists turn ruthlessly on one another. Mr. Darabont, carefully spacing out the clashes between the pragmatists and the fanatics, masterfully builds this pressure so that at the crucial juncture, all bets are off — these frenzied suffocating souls are capable of anything.

One final twist unites the two stories, merging the group drama with the horror film that’s been stalking just outside. As David and his crew make a series of expeditions, leaving the store for supplies, Mrs. Carmody and her followers are left behind. And as the mist separates the groups, it comes to evoke the chasm dividing our modern world. Forget the things going bump out there in the night, or the prospect of a vengeful God reaching down to give us puny mortals a thorough thrashing. “The Mist” suggests that the far scarier prospect is our collective inability to find some sense of empathy and our failure to locate a point of understanding with our fellow man.

ssnyder@nysun.com


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