Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. The screening Harry arranged last night was pretty great, despite some last minute location changes. I've debated whether or not I'm going to write a review myself. It's tricky territory. Many involved with this film are people I'd consider friends and I spent so much time on the set that I don't know if I feel good about writing a review. I will say that I ended up really enjoying the movie (surprise surprise), but I'm a Stephen King fanboy. To such a great degree that I even dug into my 35mm collection and lent that great MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE trailer to the Alamo for their Stephen King trailer reel that unspooled before the feature. So, as I continue my internal (to review or not to review) struggle, here are a few reactions from last night's screening. If you have no idea what King's THE MIST is about, then you are in for some minor spoilers, but nobody ruins anything big or new! Enjoy!
Use this if you want... SOME SPOILERS BEWARE I was lucky enough to snag a ticket to the World Premiere of “The Mist” at the Alamo Drafthouse, Lamar this evening, and I must say I was extremely impressed. Frank and co. are sitting on a real gem. I am a huge King and Darabont fan, love Thomas Jane, but had never read the novella, so I wasn’t really too sure what to expect. I was also a bit leery about the creatures, fearing how well they would integrate into the story, and whether they would present something that is accurate to the tone of the film, and not indulgent in a bad FX sort of way. Truth be told, the quality of the writing and performance could have been dragged down by the creatures and CG quality, but thankfully that was not the case. The beasts were fantastically realized and quite original, and really felt like they could have come from some lost primal, Lovecraftian universe where our worst nightmares tread. There was a nice variety and originality to their designs and personalities that really made the film even scarier, rather than intruding on the excellent tone Frank created between set pieces. I am amazed at how much they did with so little. Great, design, very solid CGI. The writing/directing is excellent, very Frank obviously, and the ending which I will not give away, is very true to the tone, and the characters. Standouts include obviously Thomas Jane who can frankly, do anything. Marcia Gay Harden is fucking scary as hell, and made me hate her with a passion, I seriously wanted to throw my fucking burger at the screen at her. Will Sadler has a nice role, and really just everyone did solid, quality work. The Mist is a very well done film, one of the best I have seen in a while, and new classic for horror. Frank has done an incredible job of pulling us into the reality of the characters and their situation, while creating an atmosphere of complete and utter terror and even hopelessness at times, allowing for the finer and fouler aspects of humanity to show through with great form. Great performance, high tension, gore galore, and kick-ass monsters. What else could you want from a horror flick? The audience ate this one up...check it out when it opens! Truck Stop Commando PS Had the opportunity to meet and speak with Greg Nicotero and Frank Darabont after the screening. What class acts, nice as hell, very personable, really made the night special with the care and attention they showed their fans. There are also some very cool easter eggs sprinkled throughout the film, geeks should spot them with ease...
The following review is a little more in-depth and I have to share in the below reviewer's props to Marcia Gay Harden and Toby Jones. From the moment I saw Jones as Ollie on the set I knew that Darabont had found the perfect actor and he, indeed, is my favorite character in the movie. Harden knocked it out of the park as Carmody, without a doubt, and was helped by an added scene of her praying in the toilet... an insight into her point of view that helps us to understand where she's coming from and gives her a little more depth as a character... Dammit! I'm going into review-phase... I will stop. Here's the next review!
I'm sure you'll receive plenty of these in the next day or so, but here's my pair of pennies... Coming from someone unfamiliar with the Stephen King novella I'd have to say that THE MIST from the standpoint purely as a horror film is, at the very least, refreshing. I have no clue of its faithfulness to the source material (although with Darabont doing King I don't think that's ever really an issue), but as a film it's one of the more satisfying horror film experiences of recent memory. For those that haven't read the novella, haven't seen the trailer, or just can't read the title and figure out what the movie's about, it's about a mysterious mist that sweeps over a small town the day after a devastating storm. The storm causes some ample structural damage and electrical failures to the neighborhood homes, which sends a good number of the townspeople, which includes Thomas Jane as a man with the most incredibly awesome film-geek profession ever put on screen, to the local supermarket to gather supplies in the instance of a long term power outage. While there a fellow townsperson panically comes running in shouting that there's something in the mist that killed his friend. The townspeople, not really knowing what to make of the man's story, shut the doors as a precaution as the mist creeps closer, and gradually throughout the next few hours become aware that there is indeed something(s) deadly inside the thick of the mist. The first thing I'd like to comment on is how immediate the entire film is. Pretty much from the get-go the threat is evident, and the characters are thrown in to a crisis. There's little, if any, real character or relationship introduction. Within the first 2 minutes of the film the storm hits (and causes some painfully horrifying damage to an art room that is GUARANTEED to bring the film-geeks to perpetual tears), and within the following 10 minutes the mist begins to take over the town. I have to say that I really liked this approach. Even though the events of the film are pretty extreme I thought it helped ground the movie into a more natural reality with the characters. It felt less motion picture and a bit more documentary. There seemed to be very little unnecessary, or unnatural conversations between the characters, meaning that we're not subject to listening to dialogue that's in place for no other reason than to say, "this is me, this is what I do...". It's actually a credit to the story that I really connected with a good number of the characters without knowing much about who they were prior to the arrival of the mist. Usually I find it difficult to have sympathy for anyone if you know very little about them before they're dealing with the threat, but Darabont, and the actors for their part, do a great job in sort of defining these people on the go. Speaking of which, the actors all do some very strong work across the board, which is fairly atypical of the horror genre as of late. Darabont did well in casting some primarily seasoned actors in the meaty roles, which served very well considering that a good amount of the horror material comes from within the supermarket shoppers, and not the things inhabiting the outside mist. Most notably, the two characters he got spot on for the roles he wrote were Marcia Gay Harden as the obsessive religious fanatic (a favorite of King's apparently), and Toby Jones as one of the supermarket employees. Even though the crowd spends the most time with Thomas Jane and his son, who make a very believable father/son pair with their interaction, Marcia Gay Harden and Toby Jones will undoubtedly elicit the most crowd reaction. As I said, though, it's strong work all the way around with the cast members. Andre Braugher, Bill Sadler, Laurie Holden, et al. You can go down just about the entire cast list and draw upon at least one moment that they give or do something memorable, but Jones and Harden just seem to have more of those moments available, and they take full advantage. Also supplying some strong work were the make-up effects group. The movie is given an R-rating and it definitely makes it noticeable. There isn't necessarily an over-abundance of gore, but when it's needed they pull no punches. On the flipside of that, the one major gripe I had with the film were actually the digital effects on the different creatures of the mist. It's not that they look bad, they just look...digital. In general, I'm opposed to digital effects in horror flicks anyway, because they hardly ever come across real enough, or non-cartoony enough. Typically, it almost always takes me right out of the experience and I'm back in my theater chair instead of in the movie. However, I do realize that you can't really make flying puppets look great either, and considering the minute budget that Darabont was working with I'd say that the effects probably exceed what a typical film with the same amount of money would normally generate. I will say that the focus on sound effects for the creatures really added a great amount of depth to help draw them out of their 2-D world and into the reality of the film. They don't exactly look real, but the good work on the different sound bytes for the creatures when they were moving helped give them some weight, and ultimately made them seem about as real as possible. The only other problem I had with the film was that I really wished there wasn't an explanation for what the mist, and its inhabitants, was and where it came from. Sometimes I can appreciate, and want to know everything about the supernatural elements. Other times I like just a smidge of ambiguity. I would have preferred the latter in this instance, and maybe worked out the details as they were presented visually as opposed to one of the characters just saying what the thing really is and where it came from. Sometimes I like something just to be insinuated rather than outright told. All in all, this is a real treat for horror fans. It's got everything you could ask for with some extremely tense sequences, excellent character work, gore, and an ending that spits in the face of convention and is downright daring by today's Hollywood standards. It's a very mature and professional piece of work in a genre that otherwise plays to the immature and fantastic parts of our likes and tastes. They rarely make horror flicks like this anymore. When's the last time you can recall seeing an American-made horror film where the average age of the characters looks to be above 35? I hope Darabont chooses to revisit horror sometime in the future, because I could always go for an adult approach and execution to a genre that's been playing towards teenagers for far too long. Just no more opening sequences like what's in THE MIST. I can handle dismemberments, or scary religious extremists, but watching the destruction of that room....made me weep heavily. Thanks, THE BEEF
The Beef brought up some touchy subjects above, especially about the digital effects. I found myself pleasantly surprised, actually. I didn't like the digital work on some of the tentacles in the loading dock scene, but I really love what CafeFX did for the bugs and spiders and the rest of the creatures. Our final review of this story is one of the best from the night. They say some very flattering things about the site and while I don't know if we deserve to be in the same category as Famous Monsters, I will say that Forry Ackerman was a huge influence on Harry's personality and I'd say if he tried to be anybody when he started the site it was probably Uncle Forry. You can see Forry's type of cheeseball humor all over Harry's stuff.
The Return of the Creature Feature How do you end a story that never had an ending? Stephen King's The Mist was always one of his most cinematic stories. However it lacked a tidy closing moment. The readers were asked to create their own ending. The situation is bleak… you are out of gas, and surrounded by things that shouldn't be here. Frank Darabont says that not only was King happy with his new ending, but that he would have used it had he come up with it himself. I won't spoil anything here, but Frank came up with a fantastic way to end this story. It really is the ONLY way to end the story. Anything else would have been too Hollywood. Stephen King will be very happy with this adaptation. Frank Darabont remains the best adapter of King's work. This film will have its haters – I've read enough people in the talkbacks to know that some people just want to have something to complain about. But this film offers up some great scares, some really cool creatures, and just a plain good time at the movies. In a cinematic time where torture and human suffering sell tickets, we seem to have lost the good old creature movies that ultimately made scary movies so enjoyable. They don't make horror movies the way they used to. That is what made The Mist so much fun. It's a lot like an old school Horror movie – The Blob with tentacles. The people on the screen are scared, and there is a reason. There are things in The Mist... They think you taste pretty good, and they don't seem to be as scared of you as you are of them. The cast does a great job of being believable in an unbelievable situation. This is really a disaster movie with monsters. Disaster movies generally have cliché's built in, but this one avoids most of them because the characters are believable. There was never a moment when I said to myself, "Now, come on… they wouldn't do that…" They might. I read this story nearly 20 years ago… maybe longer. Stephen King is always a great choice when you are in the mood for something spooky. But his early short stories are some of the creepiest. It's hard to believe that of all of the King adaptations, this one never saw the big screen before now. That's a good thing though, because Frank Darabont and his cast and crew couldn't have gotten this one closer to the feel of Stephen King. There isn't a whole lot of exposition, we are drawn into the story right away, and the film doesn't really let go until the end. It's got some great jump scares, but it is also very tense all the way though. The pharmacy scene had my wife squeezing my hand until it hurt… and I was squeezing right back. Is it perfect? Maybe not. Mrs. Carmondy is just as annoying in the film as she was in the book. But that in itself is a testament to how faithful the film is to the story. There is a lot of Bible thumping on the screen. A lot of preaching, and that may turn some people off. But it serves her character. She believes she is doing the right thing, and what she does is horrible. She becomes just as much of a monster as the things in The Mist. Maybe she's even worse. The things that humans do to each other can be just as bad as the unthinkable monsters can do. Yet there are people like her out there. If the Mist hit the fan like it does in this story, who's to say we wouldn't start to believe what she's saying too? I know if I saw that shit coming under my garage door, I'd be thinking God took the day off - because that shit ain't right, man. Even though annoying, her character is accurate to King's story. She might turn off some viewers, though. Extra credit goes out to the Creature people involved in The Mist. This film has some great Monsters in it. The FX work by Café FX and the physical FX by KNB are really well done. I read a lot about this film here on AICN along with the rest of you. I've heard some negative things said about the FX from recent test screenings, but I was pleasantly surprised, and I must say – CREEPED THE FUCK OUT. It all looked pretty seamless to me. Yes, you could tell there was CGI, but it was good CGI. Some notes about the screening. I purchased tickets for the screening right after it was announced. I was excited about getting to see the NEW Alamo Drafthouse at The Ritz on 6th Street. I was a little bummed to find out that the screening was moved to another venue. And while I give The Alamo points for bring creative with the dinner selection; Linguini with Squid Ink Cream Sauce with Calamari and Muscles was a bit much for me. Yeah it's cool to have the audience chew on tentacles before the show, but a Cheese Burger would have been nice. We saw some really great previews for past Stephen King adaptations… awesome. Maximum Overdrive looked so damn cool. After the film, Frank Darabont stayed around for a Q&A with Harry and the audience. He was joined onstage by Second Unit Director and KNB guru Greg Nicatero, and a cast member that had an unfortunate encounter with a pool of gasoline in the film (sorry, I didn't get his name). There was a lot of discussion about the ending of the film, which Frank asked the online community to keep to themselves so as to allow other people to discover it for themselves. It's hard to discuss this flick without touching on the ending – it changes everything. With all the creatures and the havoc they bring – the monstrous things humans can do can be even more devastating. It brings to the story to a great Twilight Zone moment of realization. I loved the ending, and it made the rest of the film better. Frank also discussed his love of Creature Features, of Famous Monsters of Filmland, and how that magazine drove so many people to want to make movies. He talked a bit about Indiana Jones… no details of course. He hasn't read the script so doesn't know what they held onto, but he says he is to thank for bringing Marion back. So from me, Frank – Thank You for that! Next up for Frank is a well deserved vacation in the Caribbean, and he hopes to get into Fahrenheit 451 next. A project he's been dreaming of doing since he was 9. If it's something that's been burning in him for that long – it's going to be a great movie. He also may be directing an episode of Battlestar Galactica – how cool is that? Frank has wanted to make a monster movie for a long time, and I hope he gets a chance to do it again, because this was a lot of fun. He seemed to have had a lot of fun making it. I want to thank Frank for allowing AICN to be a part of this movie. I read Quint's set visits eagerly, and to have this film come to Austin tonight was a fitting conclusion. If you read those reports, and were excited by what you read, you will love this movie - it's all on the screen. If you read the story and have fond memories of not being able to sleep at night, you won't be disappointed either. Famous Monsters in Filmland isn't around anymore, and that's a shame. This is exactly the kind of movie that they would have featured in their pages. But AICN is, in a way, an extension of that great old magazine, so it is appropriate that The Mist be featured here at Aint It Cool News. It was a great night out… I am… The Brain Machine.
