"The Mist"

I remember first reading "The Mist" a generation ago and thinking then that the novella was Stephen King's best effort to date. And, in fact, I believe it still may be.

"The Mist" is a different sort of nightmarish terror. No simple bumps in the night. No closet monsters. What happens is this: An unspecified accident occurs at an unspecified military base (kinda like "The Stand" in that regard) and unleashes a wall of fog on a sleepy New England town- and ostensibly way beyond.

David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his young son, Billy (Nathan Gamble), happen to be shopping at the grocery store when the mist sweeps across the parking lot- and a frantic old man stumbles in, bloodied, hysterically crying that something in the mist took one of the locals, presumably just gobbled him up.

The gaggle of shoppers inside the store is skeptical, but this mist is unlike anything they've ever seen. They huddle together, staring out the plate glass windows, wondering if they should leave. Human nature being what it is, they don't go outside.

Not right away.

On so many levels, one can peel the layers away from the story and define humanity. The town's kook, Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), also happens to be shopping.

She's a Biblespouting sociopath (because many of King's kooks are Biblespouting sociopaths). Mrs. Carmody thinks the wrath of God is upon mankind- believes it to such a perverse degree that she eventually demands blood sacrifices to appease whatever lurks in the mist. Mr. King's disdain of Biblethumpers isn't really a secret.

A bigcity lawyer also happens to be shopping for groceries. He's lawsuit-happy and doesn't seem to like people very much. (He might as well have been a politician, but you get the gist.) A couple of local hicks are also present- and right there we've gathered the holy trinity of American civilization: religion, politics and class structure.

Add a teacher, a soldier, young lovers, a grizzled old cynic, and our volatile deck of cards is complete. Throw in gradually mounting terror, and let's see what happens.

It's you and me against the unknown, and, if one were to believe "The Mist," I'm not sure which is to be the most feared.

The film, by the way, isn't a slasher flick per se. It's a thinking person's horror story, an intellectualized "what if" scenario snatched from our most exquisite nightmares. (Mr. King is good at that.) Okay, one by one, people do disappear. Yeah, blood does spill. But, under the circumstances, it's not wanton. It's just damn scary.

Scarier is the breakdown of normal societal restraint. Trying to fight the monsters in the mist, we're suddenly fighting amongst ourselves. Taking sides. Devising strategies. Are we as a species really so close to slipping back into tribal hysteria? Into bloodcraving anarchy? "The Mist" is so bleak a fable that, despite its decent cinematic distraction, it delights in destroying any hope for us as a species.

Seems that we almost deserve to be eaten.

What I originally loved about King's novella was its ambiguous ending- finally, a glimmer of hope emerges through the mist. But director Frank Darabont strips us of even that chance, and strips it so utterly bare, in so unrealistic, implausible a way, that I can't bring myself to recommend this film.

Horror purists may scoff, may call Darabont's interpretation a delightfully ironic twist, but I view the film's last scene as yet another Hollywood "gotcha" moment. It served merely to drain me of a once deliciously savage, yet ultimately hopeful experience.

I mean, even in the worst of situations, shouldn't there always be hope?