The Mist [2007] (DVD)

It's "Lord of the Flies" with Cool Monsters in it! This is a little gem of a film and if five stars seems excessive for what is basically a B-movie and an umpteenth Stephen King adaptation, well, maybe I'm just jaded with sado-porn ("Saw", "Hostel", et al.) and applaud "The Mist" for its back-to-basics ethos. All of which makes "The Mist" sound like a cult novelty, but in fact it has a great pedigree. The story was a Stephen King novella, occupying the first 150-odd pages of Skeleton Crew (arguably, the last truly classic thing King has written). Director and screenwriter Frank Darabont has had a pretty fruitful relationship with King, turning out The Shawshank Redemption [1995](adapted from King's Different Seasons) and The Green Mile [2000]. Darabont has a great feel for King's tone and concerns and clearly takes an impish delight in the conventions of the traditional popcorn monster-movie - he even tried to have the film made in B&W to capture the tone more fully but you'll need to shell out for the 2-disc set if you want to see that. A labour of love, then, and very much a film steeped in King's old school horror sentiments, rather old-fashioned by today's eyeball-severing standards. It could easily become lazy and self-indulgent, an in-joke for King afficionados. Thankfully, Darabont is too skilled for that and produces a tightly scripted, deeply unsettling movie of relentless menace and engaging humanity. As with most of King's tales, the humans here are the real monsters. Trapping a bunch of New England townsfolk in a supermarket as the otherworldly mist rolls in creates the sort of all-American microcosm that generates significant tensions all by itself: arrogant city slickers versus blue collar locals; uneducated rustics versus middle class intellectuals; religious zealots versus sceptics... As with William Golding's Lord of the Flies, this is a tinderbox ready to ignite and the spark is provided by fear and isolation. The monsters are almost an afterthought and Darabont wisely keeps them off-camera and out-of-sight for most of the movie: writhing tentacles here, malevolent shadows there, then bugs and spiders, bugs and spiders everywhere! Thomas Jane is engaging and stoical as the lantern jawed hero (another of King's improbable artist-outsiders who keep their heads when trained soldiers are losing theirs) but Laurie Holden feels somewhat underused as the female lead. Possibly they're just both utterly overshadowed by Marcia Gay Harden's despicable villainess, Mrs Carmody. A local nutjob and noisy God-botherer, the film deals unflinchingly with her ascent to power and influence as the sane and settled values of her neighbours collapse around them. Intriguingly, Carmody is clearly mentally ill, rather than just "overly religious", but Darabont keenly traces the psychological momentum behind cult and sacrifice: many of these scenes will linger with viewers long after the monsters are forgotten. Not that I would disparage the monsters or the minor characters. All are well-realised and vividly constructed in broad brush strokes. Remember how Peter Jackson wasted an hour in King Kong [2005] trying to get us to care about his shipful of victims? Darabont achieves more in 10 minutes and his monsters, for all they're mist-veiled, feel _bigger_ than "Kong"'s fake dinosaurs. The "good" humans are sympathetic and shrewdly observed (Toby Jones' Ollie Weeks turns out to be the surprise hero; Frances Sternhagen's crotchety schoolteacher is a pillar of moral fortitude) but even the "baddies" have their own logic and tragic inner life, Andre Braugher's chip-on-the-shoulder neighbour and William Sadler's screw-loose mechanic deserving particular menton. The ending, of course, is surprising and shocking and I'll not dwell on it too much except to point out that here, as in many other artful departures from King's original narrative, Darabont drives home the film's big theme: the influence of faith and the atrocities that spring from despair. Not just your average monsters-in-the-mist horror film; this will have you debating the "what ifs" and the "if onlys" long after the closing credits. In fact, you'll just want to start over from the beginning and watch it through again. And that's just what I did!

Mist Opportunity! Absolute garbage of the highest order. Actually, having said that, I think it could have been saved by a) better acting, b) a better story, c) a better ending, d) better FX, e) better dialogue. Without those elements, it adds up to a hokey piece of turged, predictable pap. The "shock" ending is just laughable. If you turn the DVD off 10 minutes before the end, you will probably enjoy the movie far more.

Lost in the supermarket... Terrific adaptation of Stephen King's novella by Frank Darabont, director of other King works The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption. Spoiler-free synopsis: after a violent storm, a mysterious mist rolls over a small New England town, trapping a representative sample of the local populace in the supermarket. Very bad stuff ensues. I've always maintained that King is the anti-Spielberg (showing the horror, rather than the wonder, that lies beneath beneath the surface of small-town America) and 'The Mist' is somewhat like the anti-ET - the small but significant difference being that the beastie from god-knows-where in this one would rip your liver out or flay you alive long before you had any cute ideas about sticking him on the front of your bike and riding off to Little League. It's highly derivative in parts (look out for steals from/ tributes to Jaws, Alien, The Birds and many others) but executed with such chutzpah that these merely add to the entertainment. Plenty of gruesome effects, but used with taste and discretion, and an uncompromisingly brutal ending (in the emotional rather than visceral sense). All very much hide-behind-the-sofa suspense rather than the stuff of nightmares though. Recommended for strong stomachs of thirteen years or so upwards, particularly recommended for those who think Dr Who is the ne plus ultra of this kind of material. Excellent family viewing, in fact... bank up the fire, pour a big drink, settle back and enjoy.

Tescos will never feel the same again. There have been umpteen adaptions of Stephen King stories - not all of them successful. However, director Frank Darabont seems to be able to tap into the heart of his stories much better than most. The short novella, 'The Mist' turned out to be quite influential, having inspired the excellent Half Life PC game series. This adaption sticks to the psychological drama cum monster movie fairly faithfully and is all the better for it. Ordinary people in an extraordinary crisis in a recurring King theme. Here we find a group of townspeople holed up in a supermarket, afraid to go out because Certain Death lurks outside. You can also spot the author's hand in the presence of a dangerous religious nutter who slowly corrupts the fearful inmates with her hellfire and damnation views. But if I was confronted with nightmarish creatures from another dimension, I might start to think she had a point too. There's been much talk of the ending. It's very bleak, but to my mind it has more resolution than the original story, which just left us with a world that will never be the same again. It's a matter for debate though. This is a film that will appeal to comic book sci-fi connoisseurs as well as having enough gore to satisfy conventional horror fans. Well worth a look.

Commendable, flawed, but worthy, but.... Ok, any film that evokes The Twilight Zone, Ray Bradbury, HP Lovecraft, finds time to critique the Bush administration and far right religious fundamentalism, and throws up some of the creepiest monsters in film history has to be great. Doesn't it? Well, taken as an oddball throw back to the thought-provoking and damn right bleakness of the sci-fi of the 1960s and 70s, this is great stuff. But...... there's a few things prevent it from being brilliant. (It is still really good though) SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ ON IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS FILM - AS YOU READ ON MORE WILL BE REVEALED, SO DON'T GO ALL THE WAY DOWN. Firstly, it feels like some bits have been missed in terms of character development. The tentacled monster at the back of the store doesn't convince The conversion of some of the store into mental Bible-bashers (what else can I call them?) feels rushed and contrived. The big lobster creature in the car park deserves more screen-time The much-vaunted depressing ending, depressing as it is, again feels misjudged and out of sync. The final segment is as spooky and affecting a scene as I've seen in a long time - enriched by Dead Can Dance and Lisa Gerard's amazing haunting vocal. This is a truly amazing part of the film, enhanced by the appearance of a creature so huge and grotesque that it's mere existence in our dimension suggests that the Mist is no freak occurrence and that thanks to the scientific meddling of the Arrowhead Project, this is what our world is now - a cruel surreal world of pain and terror. Ending the film here, without reason, meaning, totally ambiguous and without hope, would have had more impact for me. As it stands, hats off to one of Hollywood's best directors for such a brave, unique vision.