Play Misty for Me

My buddy Sangediver set me up to write this review, so I figure I'd better deliver. The night before Thanksgiving (and all through the house?), I caught The Mist at the movie theater. Any lover of scary movies should see this film. I believe I enjoyed this more than anything in the genre I've seen in several years.

It starts with very cool monsters, which are effectively revealed bit by bit. First, you don't get to see anything at all -- only very well-created sound effects. Gradually, you see more and more varieties of critters, each nastier than the last. Very creepy and very clever.

That underpinning is then built upon by very good characters. To me, this can be a hit-or-miss area for a Stephen King story, but either the source material was good this time, or Frank Darabont improved on the original in his screen adaptation. You do get drawn in to what many of the characters are going through. You really get worked up to cheer for some, and boo others. Where many films would just line up lambs for the slaughter, the people in this film matter.

Indeed, some of them fulfill very specific narrative roles, because it turns out the movie has a few points of biting social commentary to make. In a perfect story, I might prefer it to be a little less overt and on-the-nose than depicted here, but it's sort of hard to quibble with it. For one, these characters are facing down "the end of the world," which will surely bring out some melodramatic behavior. And secondly, most horror movies don't even bother with a "message." (George Romero's stuff, and maybe almost nothing else?) So points here for that, especially since the movie still manages to be scary at the same time.

Actually, not just scary. The movie does have its "jumpy moments," but it has even more genuinely tense moments. A sequence involving a person heading out into the mist, tied to the end of a rope, is one of the best sequences in the film, and there's not a single cheap scare in the entire scene. Perhaps the most impressive thing is that the movie is able to regularly generate this suspense without the aid of the music. The film does have a score (by Mark Isham), but it is used very sparingly. I believe that over half of the movie plays "dry," including every scene that takes place in the supermarket. Yet the movie doesn't need an orchestra to put you on the edge of your seat.

Then there's the ending. Very strong, very unconventional.

I give the movie an A. It might even make the bottom few of my top 100 list, though I must admit that when I looked at the list to try and slip it in somewhere, it only made me realize it's well past time I did some housekeeping on it.