The Mist by Paul Bullock

On the face of it, Frank Darabont is not the most obvious choice of director for an adaptation of Stephen King's monster mash novella The Mist. Sure, he's struck gold with King adaptations The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile in the past, but they were more dramatic efforts from the master of the macabre, and since then the only things to occupy Darabont‘s slate have been Capra-esque drama The Majestic, a couple of episodes of hard-hitting TV shows such as Raines and The Shield, and a handful of producing jobs. Like we said, hardly great credentials for the director of a modern day horror film. But then, The Mist is not your average modern horror film...

A world away from the 'torture porn' and steroid-enhanced zombie flicks of recent years, this is a good old-fashioned 50s B-movie which begins with that classic B-movie staple: a spooky storm. After mother nature has done her business, we meet David Dreyton (Thomas Jane). He’s an every day Joe with a beautiful wife, cute kid and cushy job designing movie posters (legendary artist Drew Struzan providing the examples). Sadly, he now also has a wrecked boat house and broken window to repair, and so travels to the local hardware store to collect some supplies to sort the damage out. Bad idea...

Just minutes after arriving, a mysterious mist containing a hoard of vicious beasts descends on the store, trapping Dreyton and his fellow shoppers, including neighbour Brent and Old Testament religious kook Mrs Carmody, inside. If you’ve seen Night of the Living Dead or classic Twilight Zone episode The Monster Are Due On Maple Street you know what’s coming next. Leaders emerge from the rabble, some dismissing the existence of the monsters, some looking for a way out and some believing it’s the end of the world. But despite the predictability of the set-up, The Mist proves an intensely engrossing experience, mostly thanks to Darabont’s delicate adaptation.

Opting for slow-burning tension instead of cheap shocks and obvious scares, Darabont shows how quickly the social niceities which bind us together can be replaced by fear and mistrust. Out-of-towners who were previously valued citizens are now greeted with resentment, old grievances return in full force meaning some opinions are dismissed out-of-hand and even our hero is ignored because of his high-profile job. Darabont never ventures outside of this pressure cooker environment and it’s well over half way through the film before the monsters manage to find a way in, so all we’re shown for the first hour is a group of normal people bickering and fighting with each other. Shawshank it ain’t.

Because of this, a mainstream audience may find the film a little slow, and even some highbrow critics have complained that the characters aren‘t really deep enough to engross. But while they remain rooted in their genre, Darabont cleverly adds shades of grey for the cast to develop on. Carmody and Brent are undoubtedly the villains of the piece, but they have understandable views and it‘s easy to see why they gain such strong support as the situation grows worse. Equally, David and geeky shop assistant Ollie (Tobey Jones) seem the film‘s heroes, but are both forced into some morally dubious actions in order to survive. By the time the monsters find a way in then, each character seems realistic and relatable and it’s easy to feel sympathy for all of them, whether you like them or not.

Indeed, for all its darkness (and it does get very, very dark), The Mist is still consistent with Darabont’s humanistic oeuvre. Unlike the similarly themed Cloverfield, this is not a visually chaotic film, but one directed with a ghostlike chill and tragic calm. Darabont uses sparse handheld camerawork, slow fades and long lingering pans to create a dreamlike (well, nightmarish anyway) image of the world systematically shutting down. The quiet moments between the attacks prove the most chilling, with the survivors reduced simply to waiting for death, but even when the monsters do get their fill (such as in a gloomy sequence involving spiders and a pharmacy) the film feels tragic and not thrilling. The world and its inhabitants, it seems, will go down with a sad whimper rather than a nihilistic bang.

Despite all the brilliance that goes before it though, it is likely the film will be best remembered for its thought-provoking ending. Of course, we won't spoil it for you here, suffice to say it’s different from the book, and very, very startling. But while King has approved it, and even gone so far as to say he wishes he‘d thought of it, the writer's original finale is the superior one, feeling more organic and ambiguous than Darabont’s sadly rather tacked-on conclusion. Still, like the rest of the film, it’s brave and heart-wrenching. Watching it, you’re reminded of the dark places George Romero, David Cronenberg and Wes Craven took us in the heyday of horror back in the 1970s, and while it homages the films of two decades earlier, it is perhaps that golden era that The Mist owes the most to tonally. Eli Roth and his other 70s fanboys should take note. This is how it’s done.