“Stephen King’s The Mist” is actually a great movie.
Last Monday night, I decided to watch a movie. Not really a surprise, right? I’ve admitted that I love movies, my DVD collection is pretty big, and my TiVo’s hard drive is almost always full. A couple of months ago, I made the announcement that I was going to try to watch every movie in the TSPDT list of 1,000 greatest films (plus the best of the 21st Century films so far), and I have a pile of movies recognized as “great” sitting on a shelf, just waiting to be viewed. So when I assessed my evening and decided that I had a couple of free hours, I reached for…
“Stephen King’s The Mist” by Frank Darabont.
Don’t bother looking… it’s not on the “top movies” list.
When I was a teen, I loved Stephen King’s books. The Shining, Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot… they were all greedily devoured by my young horror-obsessed mind. The Stand was an epic work that lasted an entire family vacation in Cape Cod. The movies based on King’s novels were pretty amazing, too. DePalma’s “Carrie”, Cronenberg’s “The Dead Zone” and Kubrick’s “The Shining” were and remain favorites of mine.
But then a couple of things happened. My taste in literature started to mature and King’s novels started reading more and more like fleshed-out movie treatments. I still respected the man, but I slowly stopped reading his work. The movies started getting worse, too. “Cujo”… “Christine”… and many mediocre (or worse) TV adaptations… culminating in King’s own destruction of “The Shining” in what was probably one of the more wrong-headed moves in an industry known for wrong-headed moves.
Occasionally, there would be moments of genius. The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, for example. But for every good Frank Darabont adaptation of a non-horror King story, there was a bad Mick Garris adaptation of his horror work.
So last year, I started seeing commercials on TV for a Darabont-helmed Stephen King movie. And it kinda looked like a horror flick. The ads were pretty vague… so as not to give anything away. They showed a bunch of people holed up in a grocery store in a giant cloud of fog. “There’s something in the mist!” is one of the memorable lines in the trailer. My initial reaction: “Possibly interesting. Looks like a rip-off of ‘The Fog’. And the remake of ‘The Fog’ was completely unnecessary.” I put it on my “maybe one day” list and then forgot about it.
Mark Kermode
As a former podcaster, there are still a bunch of shows that I still always download to my iPod. One of them is a weekly download from the BBC, called Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews. Not exactly the catchiest of titles, but very clear in its labeling. Mark Kermode is an outspoken film critic, and a complete and unrepentant film geek. He’s a big fan of the horror/sci-fi/fantasy genre (when it’s done right) and will always find a moment or two to praise “The Exorcist” - even in the most unlikely situations. But his criticisms can be brutal, so when a film in one of his beloved genres isn’t good - he tears it apart. More often than not, I find that his opinions about movies mirror my own, so a “must see” from Kermode is taken very seriously by me. When he reviewed “Stephen King’s The Mist” favorably, it moved the movie from “maybe one day” to “should see this sooner rather than later” (I have way too many lists).
When the movie came out on DVD, I didn’t buy it. When I bought my blu-ray player, I decided that I wouldn’t buy any new movies on the older format, and decided to wait for the blu-ray (see my previous post on “double-dipping”). My pal Jeff doesn’t yet own a blu-ray player, so he went ahead and grabbed a copy of the DVD. He’s a Kermode fan as well, so his first viewing was (by Kermode’s recommendation) of the Director’s “preferred” version of the movie - presented in black and white(!) as a bonus feature in the DVD set. After he watched it - he told me that I needed to see the movie. A nod from both Mark and Jeff pushed this movie to the top of my “I’ll buy it as soon as I can” list. Last month, nearly five months after the release of the DVD, the blu-ray was released. I bought it and promptly stuck on my shelf.
Which brings me to Monday. The evening was a little chilly by LA standards. Heather was out of town for business. I was alone with the dogs. It seemed like a perfect night for a horror movie. So I popped in “The Mist”. What a great movie. I hesitate to write too much about it because a cold viewing is the best way to appreciate it. I think the fact that I had read certain adjectives describing the ending was almost too much. However, while trying to avoid spoilers, here’s what I’ll say:
- It’s not a rip-off of “The Fog”.
- It’s definitely a horror movie - in multiple senses of the word (or multiple understandings of the genre).
- The script is intelligent and the characters are well-formed and interesting.
- The special effects (yes, there are special effects) are pretty darn neat.
This could be one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in a very long time.
Do yourself a favor. Go out and rent or buy this movie. Go for the 2-Disc version (on DVD or blu-ray) and watch the black and white cut. You can thank me later.