The Mist (2007) Retro Horror Movie Review

1/13/2016
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At it’s core, The Mist is a good, old-fashioned monster movie. Let’s return to 2007 and peel back the layers of fear that master author Stephen King weaves into this movie adaptation of his novel. There is something primal and visceral that everyone can relate to about monsters. Every child has their own version of the beast under the bed, the thing that goes bump in the night. Unfortunately, some kids have much more palpable and sinister monsters to overcome. (Psst….Don’t ask Jerrod for his five-dollar footlong.)

There are many things that frighten us. As is common in many of King’s novels, dread of the loss of a child is a major theme in The Mist. Similar to the death of the child in Pet Cemetery or the Running Man (…you didn’t know that King wrote Running Man?), The Mist chronicles a father and his son as they attempt to survive an unthinkable super natural horror that has descended on a quiet Maine town. Cut off from their wife/mother, the duo is trapped inside a supermarket when a dense and deadly fog shrouds everything in sight.

The Mist starts off with two types of fear. It literally begins on a dark and stormy night. OK, maybe not the most scary thing in this review, but when a tree smashes the protagonist’s boathouse, he has to confront his neighbor about this. While fear of confrontation may not be a physical harm it is no less phobia that strikes many people. We all know someone who stands by and lets a offense to them go without speaking up because they are afraid.

King often puts a lot of his personal experiences into his characters. When the aforementioned tree crashes through the window it lands square in the heart of the main character’s (David Drayton, played by Thomas Jane in the movie) studio. Drayton is an artist. The morning after, he surveys the damage with his wife and talks about the total loss of the piece he is working on. It doesn’t seem to be a far stretch of the imagination to think maybe something similar happened to King at some point in his career. If anyone knows if this is the case, please let us know in the comments below.

The movie really picks up steam from here on. After rushing through the obligatory horror cliche of demonstrating that phones don’t work, there are several major plot hints dropped. We first hear of “Project Arrowhead” and we are introduced to the town’s crazy cat lady, Mrs. Carmody. At this point the we get the ensemble cast that will make up the rest of the movie. It is a strong cast with believable characters. The dialogue is well written and sounds like it could have been overheard in any small town.

Suddenly the adrenaline pumps as an elderly townsman, Dan Miller (played by Jeffery DeMunn, now in The Walking Dead) comes running into the store. His face is bloody and he is frantically screaming the iconic line, “There’s something in the mist!” While no one has any reason to believe him, they do and slam the doors. Surely, the fear of the unknown is another type of fear, but the movie shifts from causing a sensation of fright to one of guilt. The single mother in the store sobs as she tells how she left her kids at home and she has to return to protect them. Begging for help, no one steps forward to go into the mist to escort. Even Drayton, now consoling his own child, feels the shroud of guilt.

At this point in the movie, the main point takes shape, but it is verbalized much later in the movie by Miller. He says, “If you scare people bad enough, you can get them to anything. They’ll turn to whoever promises a solution… or whatever.” After a gruesome monster attack in the loading down the towns people divide into two groups. Here King infuses a myriad political and religious beliefs into the story. Mrs. Carmody, played superbly by actress Marcia Gay Harden, begins a tirade of Old Testament hellfire and brimstone. At one point the director even has her doing a confessional while praying into a toilet bowl. Symbolism, perhaps? Yet the other people trapped in the supermarket express their more moderate religious philosophies throughout the movie, as well, to counterbalance Mrs. Carmody.  

Roughly an hour into the movie, they touch on other types of fear. There is fear of rejection when the young solider and cute cashier converse in private. She wonders why he never asked her out, and he has no answer. There is a fear of bugs. There is a fear of being made a fool, as when the trial lawyer states defiantly, “There is nothing out there,” then leads a small group out into the mist, never to be seen again. Then, most important to driving the plot, is Mrs. Carmody spreading the fear of damnation and hell or, in another sense, the fear of life after death.

You know it’s bad when suicide becomes an acceptable solution. (Hmm, “Suicide Solution,” that sounds like a good name for a song…) Mrs. Carmody’s insanity becomes critical and demands blood sacrifices for the monsters. When she calls for Drayton’s child, enough is enough and a small band of survivors make an escape into the deadly mist. Five escape the store and start to travel southbound in the hopes of clearing the mist.

While the original ending in the 1980 King novella is different, King himself sanctioned director/screen writer Frank Darabont‘s new ending. The most controversial and shocking ending to any movie in recent times, The Mist left its viewers stunned. The movie received high marks across the board from critics and holds up well with time. The special FX animated monsters look a little phony; however, for their time, they were cutting edge. Composer Mark Isham also does a great job capturing the eerie ambiance, but goes a little overboard with sinewy vocals at the climax of the escape scene.  

Do you have any memories of watching The Mist? If so, leave a comment and be sure to check out our other horror movie reviews. Thanks for reading, and subscribe for more content published daily.