11/28/07: The Mist (2007)
Redacted got the ridicule, but
The Mist was last week’s true bomb on the pro-Saddam front. Even better, the film’s grisly box-office death lets us enjoy
The Mist as more Leftist fantasy that serves the conservative cause. In that spirit, it’s almost worthy of Rod Serling.
BIG SPOILERS throughout this entry, by the way—although you might already know that the film’s about ordinary folks who are trapped in a supermarket. A big storm has produced a strange mist that has enveloped the town, and vicious otherworldly creatures are wandering within and looking to eat people.
“The Mist” is one of Stephen King’s finest novellas, and fairly bereft of his future knee-jerk liberal references. Horror fans have long anticipated a big-screen version that would honor the story’s mix of big monsters and subtle scares. Instead,
The Mist is a moronic movie that mixes CGI creatures with blatant stereotypes and stupid politics.
In the 1980 novella, for example, the villainous Mrs. Carmody is a vaguely New Age type. As written and directed by Frank Darabont, Mrs. Carmody is a fervent Bible-thumper whose testifying about the final days include plenty of conservative talking points. She’s even inspired to rant about stem cell research. Carmody slowly builds a following, though, and ends up demanding a human sacrifice. She’s shot dead for her efforts.
Right there,
The Mist falls victim to the inherent conservative message of every horror movie. Guns are a good idea. People want them in an emergency. In the case of
The Mist, the mild supermarket manager is smart enough to utilize his Second Amendment rights. Darabont allows that indulgence because he’s busy creating a post-9/11 metaphor.
See, a frightening thing has happened, and scared regular people are handling it differently. It’s as if the entire supermarket is a microcosm of America. As noted, Mrs. Carmody invokes irrational Christian belief and builds a following of scared ignorant people. Meanwhile, artist David Drayton and his fellow reasonable people try to survive both the monsters and Carmody.
Unfortunately, Darabont makes a ludicrous error while going for a poignant message. As in the story, the monsters have emerged courtesy of a secret military mission to probe other dimensions. King sort of writes around that whole aspect. In the movie, a soldier has to shamefully explain the military’s role. This is to set up Darabont’s big tragic ending. (Did we mention SPOILERS?)
“The Mist” literally ends with a message of hope, as Drayton and his son drive through an alien landscape while looking for escape.
The Mist ends with a sight gag. Drayton and his 8-year-old son—and some others—have escaped the supermarket and made it to his SUV. In the story, the survivors find a place to get more gas. In the movie, the tank abruptly runs out. It takes about 30 seconds before everyone decides that Drayton should shoot all of his passengers—including his sleeping son—with the remaining bullets in the supermarket manager’s revolver.
Having spared his friends and family from a horrific fate, Drayton —now out of bullets—wanders into the mist to face his own death. The next big roar, however, is the sound of an Army tank carrying brave soldiers who are dispersing the mist and saving lives. Drayton hits the ground and starts screaming in despair. The audience wishes that Drayton had seen
28 Weeks Later. Then he would’ve learned that people in horror films should stay alive and let American soldiers do their jobs.
So why did Darabont rewrite the ending? Because the military made a mess, and they can clean it up, but the innocent still suffer. Never mind that the folks in the SUV are acting in a weirdly reckless manner, or that the movie—unlike the short story—fails to provide any real motivation for Drayton to leave the supermarket. The innocent suffer. So says Frank Darabont, whose last film before this one was the equally disastrous HUAC indictment
The Majestic. At least now he can claim to have made Hollywood’s first post-surge protest film.
Here’s the weird part, though: Stephen King likes the new ending so much that he claimed “anybody who reveals the last 5 minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead.” The executives at Dimension Films weren’t so sure. The preliminary ads for
The Mist—as seen in the poster above—featured Drayton and son looking out at unseen dangers. Then, on opening day, the ads changed to reveal Drayton and a hot babe looking out at the Army fighting amongst the monsters. That same image also took over
the film’s website.
We’d tried not to learn
The Mist’s new ending. Then it was given away with the ad campaign. We knew the military was eventually going to save the day. They hadn’t shown up by the end of the film, so Drayton’s mercy killings became more hilarious than horrific. We got our grand conservative punchline, plus some goofy-looking giant monsters. Don’t be too hard on Drayton, though. It’s not his fault that he got stuck in a good Leftist’s awful screenplay.
Make it your own: Get to the theater quickly. This one’s fading fast, barely making it into the Top 10 of the box-office on the long opening weekend. Even the local bootleggers didn’t bother selling copies. They put all their efforts into getting
Hitman on the streets.
And, no,
The Mist didn’t get our money. We made it into the theater by buying tickets to
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. That one’s a pretty good family film that needs your support. It’s dying at the box-office, too, but unfairly.
Last time we checked,
that website for
The Mist still included a plug for last Friday’s episode of ABC’s
Nightline, in which “master storyteller Stephen King gives a rare, in-depth interview to Jake Tapper…about his career [and] his views on politics today.” That must’ve sold a few tickets to the MoveOn brigade, especially with a loyal Democrat like Tapper asking the questions. And don’t forget that Darabont is set to write and direct the upcoming big-screen adaptation of
Fahrenheit 451. That’ll be good for more laughs.
