Wednesday, October 11, 2017
They are coming tonight from the other side of reality
STEPHEN KING – FRANK DARABONT – THE
MIST – 2007
It is not a great masterpiece but it is a good film.
You will recognize all King’s main ideas. First, after a
storm during the night, on the following day,
all the damage is measured and checked and there is a lot. The main family, the
father is an artist, have been severely impacted and they foresee some problem
with the next door neighbor because one of his trees has destroyed their wooden
pier on the lake. They discover then that from the other side of the lake a
mist is rising. They nevertheless go to the town to get some groceries. The
father and the son go and they take the next door neighbor who is black and
whose car was destroyed by one of his trees. We will learn later on he is a New
York Lawyer.
When they are in the store the mist arrives and something
inside that mist attacks person and the
store.
The film emphasizes a lot some reactions, particularly the
reaction of a lady who is claiming she is the vessel of God. At first she is
more or less disregarded, neglected even rejected, but after the first attacks
or signs of the beast in the mist she will manage to make the majority of the
customers in the store believe it is the punishing hand of God and she will
manage to orient the anger of these people into a galvanized hatred of some
individuals requiring some punishment, purification and then human sacrifice,
and more particularly of a child, the only child in the store, the son of the artist.
Stephen King has always been vocal against religious fundamentalists, but here
Darabont seems to have increased the trait.
The second feature you will recognize is that this mist is
caused by some extreme research of some armed forces close at hand in a base
doing some research on the forms of life in parallel worlds and their attempt
to open a window between our world and theirs. The storm was so violent that it
disrupted the security and protection and the window became an open door and
the mist brought along a whole set of some kinds of giant predators of insect
or alien types. Flying insects, running and crawling insects, giant
monstrosities in which many species are crossed from insect to octopus exhibiting
the practice of the famous cinematographic Aliens that lay their eggs in living
organisms that will die when the eggs hatch. That’s more or less added to
Stephen King’s novella.
The third element is the systematic supremacist approach of
many, most people in this crowd against the only black man, the only artist,
all those who have witnessed the first attack in the back and pushed it away
with one victim, a bag boy, who was dragged away. These supremacists just pretend
this is irrational and absurd, a lie and a bad taste prank. It is not white
supremacy that is dealt with here but the general state of mind of many people
in a fearful and frightening situation: they look for the minority people around
them and accuse them of being responsible for the problem. The worst
supremacist in this crowd is, of course,
the female guru and preacher announcing the apocalypse and reading the Book of
Revelation. Anyone who is not on her side is against God and all those who are
against God are responsible for the anger of God and have to be sacrificed,
purified, etc.
This supremacist ideology is used by some to capture
influence and power but it can only develop on the basis of some frustration
and fear, mostly as a collective mood. This is marvelously developed and
demonstrated in this film. Here again, it
goes probably slightly farther than what I remember from the original novella.
But the main change is the end. In Stephen King’s novella, everything went back to normal in the
morning, more or less, but here certainly not. The presence of military forces
to recapture the territory by burning it all and rescuing the few survivors is
in line with some Kingian elements but it is pushed farther than even what King
does in The Stand. I won’t tell more about it: you have to discover it
yourself.
The film is very good as for most of the special effects,
even if some props seem to be a little bit cheap. The creatures are perfect and
have so many designs and structures that they are in many ways effective, or
would be with any younger audience. All animals that are despised and rejected by
humans out of fear or disgust are used here, small and big. What do I say, big,
giant of course is the proper word, out-worldly? Some are marvelously creative.
Entertaining and yet also dense with meaning. This film will
entertain a moonless night of yours when a tempest has cut off power and the
next door river or lake have submerged the ground floor of your house. Take
refuge in the attic on the third level and use your satellite dish to get the
film from the cloud and a small generator to get electricity. Be prepared in
one word. Just build a four-yard-high translucid wall of some indestructible
fiber all around your territory to keep undesired aliens out. And just have
some kind of dome on top that can be raised when necessary. If you have one or
two cubic meters of liquid oxygen, you will be able to survive more than a
week.
In other words, VIVA LA MUERTE! But for people outside your
tribe only.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:33 PM 
