Five minutes can change everything, especially in how you see a film. This is doubly the case when it comes to the ending. Sometimes it’s intended (The Sixth Sense), sometimes not so much (Manhattan). Looking back at The Mist, the last five minutes is what I think about, and not for good reasons. And it will be these five minutes that most of my review is going to be talking about. I’ll try not to spoil it intentionally, but I cannot make any promises.
The Mist is the third Stephen King adaptation by director Frank Darabont, who’s The Green Mile is a small classic and his The Shawshank Redemption is a mega classic. This time, he turns to one of King’s oldest novellas about a group of Maine townspeople who get cornered into a supermarket by an unnatural mist. The story focuses on David Drayton (Thomas Jane), an artist who comes to town with his small son and is trapped in the store when sirens go off and a bloodied townsfolk scream about something in the mist and the sounds of screams outside encourage that idea. Later, when a really stupid idea by a couple of the townies brings about a monster attack, this intensifies the fears going through their heads and they start forming their own little groups. One small band led by a big city judge (Andre Braugher) ignores the screams and the blood and insists that there’s nothing outside and wants to leave. Another lead by the local religious freak Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), believes this the sign of the Apocalypse and that God wants blood. When Drayton decides that he and a handful of people might need to leave, they soon learn that there might be more to worry about than the creatures outside.
The question the movie ultimately asks is who is the more dangerous species: the one inside or outside the store? It also is a look on the ways fear plays upon mankind and the psychology of fear. We can tell that Mrs. Carmody was off her rocker before the world ended, but the easy answers and lack of need to do anything about it makes what she believes very appealing to those who care not to seek a plan. Drayton might be the voice of reason, but to most who are facing imminent death, reason doesn’t have the same value. These are the key elements to the original King story that correctly sees the mist not as the enemy but the situation to test man’s soul. Darabont, when evoking King’s work, is doing the same thing. These elements are fascinating, even chilling. Darabont correctly makes the monsters indifferent to humans (though they do enjoy eating them, of course).
The ultimate problem is the ending. To end his version of the story, he does a complete 180 from the original story, which I would only be mildly upset about if it weren’t for the fact that looking back at the rest of the movie, it defeats the whole intent of the story. ***Spoiler Alert*** King’s ending eluded that the fate of his characters was not certain, but that they held on the belief of hope. The film decides to give a definite answer, and betrays how the characters would actually act. Why did the filmmaker make this decision at the end? He’s made a case against hope against uncertainly, almost siding with the film’s villain for that matter. It certainly wasn’t done for the sake of making the audience happier. There are only two answers that make any sense. The first was that he wanted to shock the audience with an ending they weren’t ready for, but at the expense of destroying the tone of his movie. The second one is more childish, but makes more sense. Darabont’s last film, The Majestic, was a great film in the spirit of a Frank Capra heartstring-tugger. It was a beautiful film that nobody saw, that most of the critics panned as being sappy. It makes me wonder if he’s decided to punish his audience. Many people might argue that this version of the film is a cautionary tale, but that doesn’t explain how you have your decent character going through all those trials and tribulations only to get to the point he does in the last five minutes.
Okay, the spoilers are over. But even without the ending, this is a mild film all the way around. The monsters look like bad CG, the acting isn’t anything to write home about (even Ms. Harden pushed her character a little too far for me to truly find interesting. And visually speaking, mist doesn’t leave much to look at. And yet I was pulled into the story, it’s characters, and their fates. Again, this is more a testament to King’s story than Darabont’s film.
All in all, I really hate this film because five minutes told me more than I wanted or needed to know. It told me that hope is futile and that those who do should be punished. It told me that the filmmaker didn’t believe in his characters from the first minute on the screen. It told me that you have to punish the good as much as you punish the bad. In the end, I just wanted it to be a really bad dream that I can forget in the morning. Such a waste of great material.