Entry #3: The Mist
We're always talking about the Before trilogy, the Toy Story trilogy or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But what about the most important trilogy of 21st-century filmmaking? What about the trilogy I call Mid-2000s Genre Fare Where An Andre Braugher Character Perishes? This trio of films, Poseidon, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and The Mist, are all connected in how they feature Andre Braugher playing supporting characters that prove to be antagonistic to the protagonists and eventually, even in the PG-rated Silver Surfer movie, meet gruesome ends. It's the only thread holding these three individual films released over the span of 18 months together but it's all they need to make up the greatest trilogy of all-time.
Moving on from belabored jokes (yes...jokes...) about Captain Holt's presence in mid-2000s genre fare, The Mist is an adaptation of a Stephen King book that follows David Drayton (Thomas Jane) as he makes his way to a local supermarket with his son, Billy (Nathan Gamble), to get supplies after a local storm. Turns out he's not the only one to get that bright idea, the whole supermarket is flooded with townsfolk looking to get essentials. The already on-edge shoppers become even more panicked when a sudden burst of mist covers the town. Eventually, they all learn that the mist isn't the only thing out there. Monsters have descended on the town and viciously devour anyone they can get their claws on.
Those aren't the only beasts to watch out for. The Mist is an example of the classic horror story of people being confined to a small space and turning on each other as time passes onward. It's a reliable template to use for scary storytelling given how its inherently slow-burn structure makes the eventual sight of people turning on one another all the more intense to experience. In the case of this specific Frank Darabont directorial effort from 2007, this well-worn storyline is used in the context of having the arrival of the mist and its assorted creatures lead a number of townsfolk to follow Mrs. Carmody (Maria Gay Harden). She's a devoutly religious Christian who believes the arrival of the Mist is an act of God against the sins of this Earth and helps to stir up animosity between the people trapped in the supermarket.
Many of the most harrowing moments of The Mist come not from watching monsters attacking normal people but rather from seeing people turn on their neighbors. The best part about Darabont's script is how ominously it realizes the slowly increasing sense of madness in the people in this supermarket, you can just feel the hostility between people bubbling as the runtime goes on. The fact that Mrs. Carmody is made such a viscerally realistic character helps to make her presence in the movie all the more intimidating. One character compares her speeches to the supermarket patrons to the speeches given by Stalin while her rhetoric using religion as a crutch to excuse hatred (particularly against "out-of-towners" who "look down on our way of life") certainly feel all the more timely in the modern American political landscape.
A relentless onslaught of miserable occurrences that transpire against the characters certainly make the dangerous circumstances that David Drayton have become trapped in all the more chilling. If there is a flaw in Darabont's writing, though, it's that this is the rare movie where characters may have been better without attempts at fleshing them out. There are a couple instances where certain side characters get a modicum of awkwardly-shoehorned in personality only so the audience will recognize them when they get offed in the next scene. Such scenes stand out given that the movie is, for the most part, squarely focused on Drayton's plight, this is not an ensemble piece. This is most notably seen with an extraneous sex scene between a soldier and a supermarket employee that seemingly only exists so that we'll know who the latter character is when she dies moments later.
Kudos for trying to lend some depth to the victims of The Mist, but they could have been folded into the story in a more organic fashion. Darabont also directs his script here and while it's not the most imaginative filmmaking (an initial scene introducing the viewers to the tentacle monsters lurking outside is clumsily executed visually), he gets the job done decently, particularly when it comes to later scenes focused on the apex of tensions between supermarketing patrons. Headlining the cast here is Thomas Jane, an actor most known for playing uber-tough-guy action/thriller roles rather than suburban dads. In a welcome surprise, he equips himself admirably to a more relatable everyman role and he really brings a convincing level of devastating sorrow to that gut-punch of an ending. That bold conclusion helps to wrap up The Mist on a successfully ambitious note that helps to cement this one as one of the better Stephen King movie adaptations and a worthy addition to the iconic Mid-2000s Genre Fare Where An Andre Braugher Character Perishes trilogy.
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