Anyone else seen "The Mist"?

[Attack Ships on Fire]

In talking about the film I'm going to reveal things that happen so if you don't want to have the movie wrecked for you, don't read on.

It's currently in theaters, the latest movie to be based on a Stephen King story. Directed by Frank Darabont, the fellow behind "The Shawshank Redemption".

For those of you that haven't read the story, it's about a group of average citizens trapped inside a small town's grocery store by an everpresent mist that descends over everything. Inside the mist are nightmarish creatures that make great white sharks look like puppy dogs. Trapped and not knowing if the mist has spread to the rest of the world, the survivors start to mentally disintergrate. Different people are affected in different ways.

Darabont's movie is pretty faithful to King's novella except that he adds on to the original ending and shows us the fate of the main characters. It's a ballsy ending and one that is not often taken by Hollywood movies. It's stuck with me for the past couple of days and after spending some time on it I feel that the ending leaves me with some questions that I think might be worthy of discussing here at RI, especially in regards to whether movies have ulterior movies for shaping human responses and such parapolitical subjects as trusting the military to protect the safety of you life and the ones that you care the most about.

It's such an odd ending not because of its nihilistic nature but that the director specifically chooses to show us that there is at least one survivor, seen in a brief instant, who by all purposes should have died earlier in the film and is seen to have been rescued by the military along with her children. This image is used to deliver maximum shock to the viewer by what we just witnessed happen a moment earlier.

That small moment adjusted my perspective with the movie considerably, and I think it's also the balancing point for a lot of people that liked or hated the film.

It might seem odd for me, a vocal critic of Hugh's theory that most Hollywood films are loaded with social control mechanisms, to start a discussion about this subject. I'm not saying that Darabont chose to end "The Mist" because the film is being used to deliver subvert messages to the audience; it could be just as simple an explanation that Darabont just wanted to mindfuck with the audience in the classic tradition of Rod Serling. Or maybe it's something more. Right now I could argue this either way.

I also thought it would be fun to launch a thread about the show because it's got some subject matter that's a favorite for some of us RI people, like the H.P. Lovecraft imagery of the mist monsters, the Charles Fort aspect for an explanation for the origins of the mist, the quantum physics aspect, man's tendency to mess with forces that he doesn't want to come face with and so on. I'd definitely recommend it as a movie of interest to the RI community.

[FourthBase]

If you could completely utterly spoil it, that'd be awesome.
I'm never going to see it, and I'm curious about the exact details.

[Jeff]

If you could completely utterly spoil it, that'd be awesome.
I'm never going to see it, and I'm curious about the exact details.

Everyone who loves movies, doesn't have time to see them but still wants to talk knowledgeably about them should know about the movie spoiler.

Spoiler for the Mist.

[FourthBase]

If you could completely utterly spoil it, that'd be awesome.
I'm never going to see it, and I'm curious about the exact details.

Everyone who loves movies, doesn't have time to see them but still wants to talk knowledgeably about them should know about the movie spoiler.

Spoiler for the Mist.

Thanks Jeff!

[Wombaticus Rex]

Thank God, I was thinking I'd have to actually watch The Mist in order to get in on this.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Wow, definitely.

"Stay where you are and obey orders. It's dangerous to go out there on your own."

That's deeply fucking disturbing, and a serious memetic hook. But then again, and this is that asshole elitist aspect of myself crawling out of the back of my head.....good, you know?

Good. When the Blair Witch Project (don't go camping, stay inside) came out, I went with some friends to see it on acid and we were the most non-impressed mammals in the room. It was just a bunch of noises -- any given night of actual camping could have yielded more scary sounds than what actually happened in the movie. And sure enough, I talk to kids my age TO THIS DAY who have never gone camping since because it's "too freaky."

We might argue about the mechanics and curiously shifting details of HMW's "theories" but media is programming, absolutely. I find it hard to feel bad for those who would allow themselves to be programmed by something as heavyhanded as this.

[Fat Lady Singing]

Hi all: Haven't seen the film in question, but now I'm interested so I'm going to try to get to it. Thanks for the tip!

I did want to say that it's important to remember that creating a film is an incredibly collaborative effort. While we often give the director full credit (or full blame) for a film, the fact is, there are many cooks in the kitchen (or many fingers in the pie).

Then you always have to look at the studio pressures, too. Let's say Darabont originally made the film with an ending to match King's novella. Studio puts it in front of test audiences, who say they're confused, or unhappy, or uncomfortable with the ending. Studio says, we've got a lot riding on this, Darabont--change it! So he does. More test audiences, more studio bigwigs, more changes... eventually the film that ends up in the theater may be quite far removed from what Darabont or any of the myriad other folks working on the film may have intended.

Sadly, with the prevalence of testing films, we seem to be getting the movies we deserve. Or at least the movies 13- to 24-year-old males deserve.

[sunny]

....
I did want to say that it's important to remember that creating a film is an incredibly collaborative effort. While we often give the director full credit (or full blame) for a film, the fact is, there are many cooks in the kitchen (or many fingers in the pie).

Then you always have to look at the studio pressures, too. Let's say Darabont originally made the film with an ending to match King's novella. Studio puts it in front of test audiences, who say they're confused, or unhappy, or uncomfortable with the ending. Studio says, we've got a lot riding on this, Darabont--change it! So he does. More test audiences, more studio bigwigs, more changes... eventually the film that ends up in the theater may be quite far removed from what Darabont or any of the myriad other folks working on the film may have intended.

Sadly, with the prevalence of testing films, we seem to be getting the movies we deserve. Or at least the movies 13- to 24-year-old males deserve.

Ever so true. The latest incarnation of The Body Snatchers, called Invasion starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig should have been great but was ruined by rewrites and reshoots done to please the suits. It is a rare film indeed that makes it intact through the money grubbing process the studios put them through. De Palma's Redacted was, well, redacted and has sunk at the BO. The Coen brothers faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Menis a wonderful recent exception.

[Et in Arcadia ego]

hmm..

The Mist is one of my favorite King stories, so I was really thrilled to see a movie released. That excitement was punctured by a really bad review I read over at IGN, so I didn't bother going to see it despite the critic's indication that the ending of the film was one of the 'best he'd ever seen'.

The ending the director chose is indeed bold, and questionable, but for me not by too much. Again, as in the zombies discussion, I think the times are shaping the creative flow, and at this point, everyone is infected to some degree or another with the cost of the US sustained conflict. Collectively, we as a people are growing moribund. Having read the spoiler, it seems the director opted for a Greek tragedy style ending in the best way he could illustrate. It reminds me of that Bradbury story where an entire civilization commits suicide one night convinced the world will end, but after they commit the act, the Sun rises the next day without fail and their world continues as usual, minus the people.

Especially in the Arts, its fascinating watching the influence of world events express themselves in people's works. I'd be very interested in hearing the director's commentary for the ending, and I'm sure we'll see one with the DVD release. I'm not particularly shocked by it; I think people have grown so accustomed to 'happy endings' ala 80's and 90's crap horror that things like this really take on more significance then they should.

A good horror movie should have everyone die, or at least have seriously questionable futures, ala The Thing.

Which unfortunately is due for a remake in the near future......

[Jeff]

Having read the spoiler, it seems the director opted for a Greek tragedy style ending in the best way he could illustrate.

That's an interesting observation. Tragedy has been remarkably underrepresented by Hollywood, even in horror, though it's a classic dramatic form.

I wonder to what degree suppression of the tragic contributes to a culture's neurosis.

[Et in Arcadia ego]

I wonder to what degree suppression of the tragic contributes to a culture's neurosis.

Probably a considerable degree when a society finds itself clotted with more ironic tragedy in real life than in its relatively safe avenues of escapism/hyper-reality like Cinema.

[brownzeroed]

Bingo!

Ever try problem solving with a Disney fan?

[Seamus OBlimey]

James Herbert

His first two books, The Rats and The Fog, are gruesome disaster novels, influenced by the science fiction works of John Wyndham. The horror - man-eating Giant Black Rats in the first, an accidentally released chemical weapon in the second - is symbolic of flaws in society: urban poverty and neglect in The Rats, political and military incompetence in The Fog. The premise of The Fog bears considerable resemblance to that of George A. Romero's 1973 film The Crazies: as in Romero's film, the chemical weapon induces violent psychosis in those who are exposed to it. In both books, government authority is seen as callous, bungling, and - despite the presence of honourable individuals - inclined to cover up mistakes rather than look for solutions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Herbert

[Attack Ships on Fire]

I did want to say that it's important to remember that creating a film is an incredibly collaborative effort. While we often give the director full credit (or full blame) for a film, the fact is, there are many cooks in the kitchen (or many fingers in the pie).

Then you always have to look at the studio pressures, too. Let's say Darabont originally made the film with an ending to match King's novella. Studio puts it in front of test audiences, who say they're confused, or unhappy, or uncomfortable with the ending. Studio says, we've got a lot riding on this, Darabont--change it! So he does. More test audiences, more studio bigwigs, more changes... eventually the film that ends up in the theater may be quite far removed from what Darabont or any of the myriad other folks working on the film may have intended.

Sadly, with the prevalence of testing films, we seem to be getting the movies we deserve. Or at least the movies 13- to 24-year-old males deserve.

You're right with about half of the films released which are test screened and tweaked right up until their ends but I can report with certainty that the ending of "The Mist" wasn't changed due to committee. There are reports on the web for test screenings of "Mist" and it had the ending that's in the final cut. The shooting screenplay was circulated without those final five minutes. Furthermore, and this hasn't been reported anywhere online that I know of, Dimension Films didn't want Darabont to go with the ending he wrote and offered him more money for the film's budget to go with the novella's ending. Darabont resisted the offer (he owned the film rights to King's story and had the upper hand in negotiations) and so the film was made on a greatly reduced budget, like $30 million dollars less.

That ending is straight from the mind of the director. You are seeing exactly what he wanted you to see.

Just so there's some kind of disclosure: I didn't work on "The Mist" but I do have relationships with people who do work in the film industry. They told me the above information. I have been a fan of the original story since I first read it and I have been following the movie's development too.

[Attack Ships on Fire]

Another two things that I want to add to the discussion:

1. The link to Jeff's spoiler page about "The Mist" mentions that some of the other survivors in the military convoy may be from the grocery store that the hero escapes from. If that's true, that's another major flag.

2. I just remembered that the hero doesn't act like a moron when he gets to his car in King's original story. He's smart and he knows that his vehicle will run out of gas eventually. He is wondering whether to try and fill up quickly using a gas pump outside the place where he is writing his story of escape from the grocery store. In the film as soon as the hero gets to his car he just drives and runs out of gas. Also in the story they try the radio and the hero thinks that they might have heard two words through the static : "hope" and "Hartford", a city nearby. They are thinking of going to Hartford but it's "hope" that the story ends on. The movie never uses the radio snippet.

So why did Darabont have his hero act like a moron when he gets outside of the store? Up until then he had been acting smart. It's like he wanted the bleakest ending for the hero and movie possible. Even in the story the hero doesn't find out the fate of his wife, in the movie he sees her dead.

The ending changes are just so odd, especially considering how very faithful Darabont was to the original up until that point.

Does anyone remember if the hero was a movie poster artist in King's original story?