A Rundown of the 13 Best, Most Recent Horror Movies I’ve Seen
[9 of 13]
THE MIST (November 2007)


More so than being a monster movie—and it is that, a rather exceptional one, to boot—The Mist is really about the desperation and insanity that can grab hold of people who are suddenly faced with the disastrous and the inexplicable.

Read the entire review here.

(The Mist OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by BLT & Associates].)

THE MIST
(Review)

Before I get into this, one thing: Frank Darabont has balls of steel. Nay, adamantium.
Balls of adamantium.
Indeed, he does.


I was first swallowed by Stephen King’s The Mist way back in 1981, in the truly exceptional and in many ways, groundbreaking, horror anthology, Dark Forces.
Mr. King’s The Mist left an impression for a number of reasons.
One: at 130 pages, it was the longest story in Dark Forces, and it introduced me to the literary form known as the novella, something too long to be called a short story, yet too short to be called a novel.
Two: it had an ending that was definitely not a happy one, and unlike, say, The Omen’s ending, where we see the main character bite the dust in his vain effort to slay the AntiChrist, The Mist’s ending was more open-ended. It presented a vague sliver of hope, but allowed the reader to decide the remaining characters’ fates; King basically left you to decide what shade you preferred for that downer ending. (Though a part of me was irked since King opted not to present a firm resolution to the story, I eventually came to understand that this was simply another way in which to end a story.)
As far as King’s novella was concerned, it ended with a choice: optimists could choose the greyer-shaded ending; pessimists, the blacker-.
In writing the screenplay for his film adaptation though, Darabont gives us a definite ending all right, and it’s certainly not a gentle one…


The day after a sudden, violent storm, David Drayton (a fantastic Thomas Jane) and his son Billy (Babel’s Nathan Gamble, soon to be seen as Jim Gordon’s son in The Dark Knight), along with a host of other townsfolk buying emergency supplies, get trapped in the local grocery when the strange titular mist comes rolling in.
People want to get home, of course. To loved ones left alone to clear up the post-storm mess, like David’s wife, Stephanie (Kelly Collins Lintz, from TV’s Surface and One Tree Hill). But no one can leave the Food House though.
There are things in the mist, see. Hungry things.


More so than being a monster movie—and it is that, a rather exceptional one, to boot—The Mist is really about the desperation and insanity that can grab hold of people who are suddenly faced with the disastrous and the inexplicable.
People get scared, irrational, unpredictable. Dangerous.
Throw in Mrs. Carmody, an unstable, religious fanatic (played by the supremely awesome Marcia Gay Harden), and an already dire situation quickly escalates into a vicious exercise in staying alive and sane.
This poor collective may have barricaded themselves in, but not all the monsters are out there in the mist…


King’s characters are brought to celluloid life by an across-the-board amazing cast which also includes Infamous’ Toby Jones, The X-Files’ Laurie Holden, Homicide‘s Andre Braugher, frequent Darabont collaborator William Sadler, and veteran actors Frances Sternhagen and Jeffrey DeMunn. Also in roles pumped up a tad from the novella, Reunion’s Alexa Davalos and Battlestar Galactica’s Sam Witwer.
The exceptional performances are then magnificently supported by some wicked creature design and effects by genre stalwarts, the KNB EFX Group.


But this is all brought together by the Man with the Adamantium Balls himself, Mr. Frank Darabont, who captures that sense of bubbling tension trapped in the confines of the grocery like some toxic gas, inexorably building up to some horrible apex where the worst in the human condition either simply deteriorates into a rank hopelessness, or combusts into raw, savage violence.
Then, of course, there’s that ending.
Hoo-boy, that ending!
Save for a handful of bits either excised from the original source material (an adulterous liaison) or added on (as per some characters getting their roles expanded from the novella, or new scenes to further flesh out plot or character dynamics), Darabont’s The Mist is pretty much the novella skillfully transfigured for the silver screen. The story’s major beats are virtually intact: Norm the bag boy, the pharmacy, what Ollie Weeks does right before they attempt their great escape, dot dot dot.
Those familiar with the novella’s generally bleak climax though, will still be chilled at the uncompromising coda Darabont chooses to close the film with. It’s brutal, people, and his The Mist is one of those emotionally potent and wrenching horror films that doesn’t hold back on its gut punches.


Coming out of a field where any weak link isn’t readily apparent, the MVP is still most definitely Darabont, who, in hijacking a substantial portion of The Shield crew during their hiatus (camera operators, D.P., editor, script supervisor, all of whom Darabont enjoyed working with when he directed an episode of the TV show) and making what he describes as a “very direct, muscular kind of film,” he’s crafted what I feel is, alongside Bryan Singer’s Apt Pupil, the best Stephen King film adaptation I’ve ever seen.
Yes, I love (to varying degrees) Stand By Me, Carrie, Pet Sematary, and Misery, but The Mist is something else entirely, and so unlike Darabont’s previous King adaptations, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, it’s astounding.
I was hoping this would be good, but I certainly didn’t expect Darabont would kick me in the a$$ quite so convincingly; he took a 27-year old story and made a riveting horror film rife with tension and emotion, that is startlingly relevant to our post-9/11 world. (He also gets to sneak some Dead Can Dance and Drew Struzan in there, so, really, what’s not to like?)


Is it terrifying? Yes.
Is it comforting? Frak, no.
But does it say something?
Yes, it does, and anyone watching The Mist will hopefully see beyond the otherworldly beasties to learn something about the very ugly, and very real monsters that live under our own, very human, skins.

“On the one level, it’s meant to be a really cool, intense, scary creature feature. But if it were just that, I wouldn’t have wanted to adapt that story. What it does give is something somewhat subversive, which I think all the best horror is.
“Really, it’s an examination of people in a pressure cooker. What does a climate of fear make you do? What mistakes does it compel? How far off the precipice do we sail? Which speaks to the ending as well.
“I just find that absolutely fascinating, because we’ve been nothing if not living in a pressure cooker of fear and the exploitation of fear, the fear of fear, so far in the 21st century. That seems to be defining our behavior, so that makes it really fantastic material to dive into.”
-- Frank Darabont on The Mist

(The Mist OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by BLT & Associates]; images courtesy of aintitcool.com, filmz.ru, and shocktillyoudrop.com.)

(Frank Darabont quote from an aintitcool.com interview.)

RAINES (Pilot)
(Review)

Michael Raines (Jeff Goldblum) once thought he could be a crime novelist, but decided against it. Too many decisions to make, he thought. (An idea that is played with to good effect in the pilot’s opening.)
So instead, he became a police detective.
Three months after an on-the-job shooting, he’s back to work, but now, the victim in the case he’s just been handed, Sandy Boudreau (Alexa Davalos, from one of the best shows from the 2005 TV season, the brutally truncated Reunion), is talking to him. She could be a ghost, or she could be Raines’ fertile imagination giving him a sounding board, but the fact remains, Raines sees her, and by interacting with her, he solves the case.

Like Dexter before it, Raines takes certain facets of the crime procedural and presents their logical extremes. If investigators imagine and visualize murder scenarios, why not have a cop actually interact with the victim?
And more than just being the show’s hook, this idea is explored quite nicely, as Sandy undergoes changes even as Raines uncovers her secrets. Her accent changes, as do her clothes, as well as her physical appearance and demeanor. This aspect of the premise then neatly dovetails into stereotypes and ingrained perceptions (a hooker would look slutty and have heavy make-up; a woman working with a sleazy detective would be a femme fatale).
This aspect of the show then allows us to see psychologies and motivations, just as the flashbacks in Lost do. In Lost, we understand better why characters make the decisions they do; in Raines, we gain insight into the murder itself, and the reasons why the victim ended up on the coroner’s slab.

Raines is one of the best of the new crop of mid-season shows (certainly far better than Blood Ties), with a pilot written by Graham Yost (Boomtown) and directed by Mr. Stephen King on the Big Screen himself, Frank Darabont.*
It’s a crime procedural with an interesting and welcome twist, that boasts good writing and a commendable central performance by Goldblum as a man who is worried he could be going mad, but is willing to see where this ride could take him. (The pilot also has a plot twist that you may see coming if you’re sharp and on the ball. Regardless, it’s a fun little curveball that spices things up quite nicely.)

Having given Raines my thumbs-up though, I would like to say that I hope there is some kind of arc here, and that this show won’t just be about the Victim of the Week. Even Dexter has the title character (a forensics expert/serial killer) go on a transformative journey over its first season.
I’d like to see Raines struggle with this predicament (for lack of a better word). This is not exactly normal, whether it’s all in his head or not, and this show should never fall into the trap of being flippant and nonchalant about the idea. That’s the way a lot of the forensics procedurals are these days when it comes to murder and victims (another week, another body), and Raines, given its atypical premise, should never fall prey to that.

* After The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, Darabont is currently shooting The Mist, based on King’s novella of the same name.

(Image courtesy of tv.com.)