Filed under: cinema
When director Frank Darabont first adapted author Stephen King’s work, he gave us The Shawshank Redemption. Despite a poor box-office showing, and valid accusations of over-sentimentality, over time it managed to cement itself as a modern classic, and wormed itself into many movie fans’ top tens (this film fan included).
His next attempt was with The Green Mile, another film based on a Steven King saccharine prison-drama, proving that lightening rarely strikes twice.
Darabont’s third crack at the whip is with Steven King’s The Mist, wherein a mysterious fog (I guess the name was taken…) smothers a rural American town. With communication and power falling foul of the fog, people take refuge wherever they can as it becomes apparent that, in the words of one panicked character, there is something in the mist.
This setup makes way for a slow-burning character piece, as vastly different characters are forced to live on top of each other in the local supermarket under huge stress. Unfortunately, the characters are largely drawn from stereotypes, and so disappoint. Thomas Jane stands apart as the concerned father, but at times he too lapses into humdrum gravely-voiced snarls that jar with the material.
With such wooden, two dimensional characters, Darabont seems to quickly run out of ideas, and so much of the movie feels like mere padding. For a film that hinges on the conflict and in-fighting amongst the characters, the sense of rising tensions is handled with very little subtlety.
And though acknowledging that the theme may be regarding the dangers of the monster inside as opposed to those in the mist, the ghouls themselves are poorly-realised. Appalling CGI apart, their design is almost uniformly unimaginative and derivative. And yet with all that in mind, they are given centre-stage for perhaps a little too long.
The Mist is perhaps elevated out of absolute mediocrity by the closing act. Without divulging details, it is safe to assume that the ending will linger longer in the viewer’s mind than the film itself.