Movie Review: The Mist (2007)

The Mist (2007) written and directed by Frank Darabont based on a novella by Stephen King

A strange mist comes down from the hills and envelops a small New England town. Normally fog would be no big deal, but people who go out into this mist often die with frightening screams. One group is caught in the local supermarket. They would be okay (there's certainly enough food and supplies) except that the local religious nutter, Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), is stirring up trouble by making apocalyptic speeches and pronouncing God's will (i.e. the mist is a punishment for sin). Under normal circumstances, people ignore her as a kook, but kooky things are happening. She seems more credible than she ought to.

Our hero, David Drayton (Thomas Jane), also comes in conflict with his next door neighbor, a big city lawyer who comes up for weekends and is not so personable. They seem to be mending fences when David gives the lawyer a ride into town but things rapidly fall apart in the mist-covered grocery store. Since he's a lawyer, he takes a strictly rational approach to the situation, a nice contrast to Mrs. Carmody's take on the situation. An interesting thematic tension is introduced...and then dropped a third of the way through the film, leaving poor David (and we poor viewers) to deal with Carmody's Crazy Cult. And the creatures out in the mist.

Other interesting themes pop up but go mostly undeveloped. For example, David's eight year-old son is with him in the store. David wants to protect him but also deal with the situation. The son is quickly reduced to a minor plot device rather than an actual character. Town new-comer Amanda is a third-grade teacher who helps out with the boy and discusses the situation with the dad and his group of helpers. She is optimistic about human nature and doesn't think Carmody is going to get any traction. All the other guys in the discussion (and yes, everyone else is male in that discussion) say that people are bad and/or dumb and they need to make a plan to deal with her or escape, maybe both. Amanda is proven wrong and quickly steps in line with everyone else, leaving another interesting theme or contrast under-developed.

The monsters in the mist are interesting but again are undeveloped. There are different types of creatures, each with odd and unnatural powers and behaviors. No cohesive explanation for them is even attempted by the film--the powers seem randomly chosen to add jump scenes and more gore to the movie. Certainly a horror movie doesn't have to explain everything, but here it just seems like more undeveloped ideas thrown in.

What should have been a tight, claustrophobic horror film turns out to be a thematic mishmash that ends unsatisfactorily for both the characters in the film and the viewers of the film. It's a shame because the film has material for three or four good horror films. Making this into a mini-series would have been much better.

The Walking Dead Ep. 211: Judge, Jury, Executioner

The Walking Dead Season 2, Episode 11: Judge, Jury, Executioner

TV Rating

TV-14

ZPAA rating

Late teen and up

Gore level

7 out of 10--Bloody torture scene including use of a knife on a leg; only one bluish zombie who gets lots of close ups throughout the episode; said zombie attacks people; bloody chest wound; one mostly-zombie-eaten cow.

Other offensive content

Bad attitudes from characters, especially from Carl; psychological manipulation; tense execution scenes; some language; cows in peril.

How much zombie mythology/content

I forgot to mention last episode that Rick and Shane discover two guards at the parks and rec place who were dead but not zombies, seemingly scratched to death. Not sure what that was about but it seems slightly relevant to this episode when a zombie scratches up someone (again no zombification results).

How much fun

No real comedy here, though the discussions about what makes us civilized and how to preserve the law are very interesting. On a happier note, Hershel seems to accept Glenn as a son-in-law-to-be with a great pocket watch story. Eat your heart out, Quentin Tarantino.

Synopsis & Review

This episode opens with Daryl torturing the newcomer to get information about the newcomer's group. Daryl is fairly successful, finding out there's 30 well armed men who have no compunctions about killing others and taking brutal sexual advantage of any women they come across. The newcomer claims he was just going along with them and he's "not like them." But mostly he begs for his life.

This information leads into an extended debate throughout the episode of what to do with the newcomer. Rick at first is inclined to execute him as a threat to their group. Everybody goes along with it except Dale. Dale convinces Rick to let him talk to everyone individually to change their minds. Dale's main argument is that they will lose their humanity and civilization if they go through with executing a man who hasn't committed any crimes yet. He goes one by one trying to bring people around to his way of thinking. Will he succeed?

The episode is full of discussions about what is practical and what is right in their situation. Dale insists that they will be no better than the group they fear if they go through with killing the newcomer. Rick's group will become lawless, bloodthirsty, and possibly worse. Clearly the group is already challenged (Dale calls it "broken") in being a cohesive and united community.

The issue of preserving their prior civilization is interesting to me because clearly that civilization is gone. They no longer live in the United States of America and it doesn't seem like the federal, state, or local governments will function again. Rather than clinging to the past they should establish a new social order. Surely morality doesn't change but practical actions dictated by morality do change under substantially different circumstances. They have become a nomadic society (though they've stopped moving around temporarily). They can't imprison someone long term and the death penalty is morally permissible if their is no jail system that can keep malefactors out of normal society.

Another interesting aspect is Hershel and Carol's reactions. Hershel says he trusts Rick and wants no input on the decision. Carol just wants someone else to decide. Clearly some people want a central authority to make decisions without relying on democratic input for every decision.

Carl is having a rough time of it in this episode. He wants to be more of an adult but he isn't ready and that does have a price. He is going to be even more messed up than he already is.

The Walking Dead Episodes 2-4

So I've fallen way behind and finally had a chance to catch up on the current AMC series The Walking Dead which I am watching through Amazon Unbox Video, since we don't have cable here. After staying very close to the plot of the graphic novels, the TV show has changed things quite a bit, adding new characters (who I assumed would be red shirts but are still around) and new situations for Rick and the other survivors.

I suppose purists would complain about changing the story line. In my opinion, it's okay to change how the story goes if the story telling is true to the central ideas, themes and tone of the original. Consider some examples: The first two Harry Potter films hewed as closely as possible to the books, resulting in a kind of "paint by numbers" film that's more or less unsatisfactory to film critics and film lovers. A film tells a story differently than a book. Later Potter films do a better job of being films when they less slavishly adhere to the book.

Another example is the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which took many liberties with the plot, introducing new characters and story lines. That didn't bother me so much, especially since the story changed from the original radio play to the books. What did bother me was the overall inability to hit the themes and tone of the previous stories. The clever and wacky tone is occasionally found in the film, for example in the opening musical number by the dolphins who are about to leave the earth. But the sharpness of Douglas Adams' wit is more absent than present, leaving the Hitchhiker's fan unsatisfied.

A third example is Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Quite a bit of reorganizing, adding and cutting were required to make the book into a good movie experience. Occasionally the movies misstep here and there, but most are understandable (dwarfs are for comic relief; Aragorn "dying and coming back to life" in The Two Towers). The tone and themes of the novel are well translated into the films without turning the films into an extended "book on film." Hopefully The Hobbit will fare as well.

So how does The Walking Dead series shape up? The tone is exactly like the books--the viewer definitely feels the oppression of living in a zombie apocalypse and how the biggest problem is the normal people turning on each other. It's nice to have a different story line, especially for a horror story. The scares are fresh because you don't anticipate them. New and different issues of how to treat others comes up. In a moment of panic, Rick and a group of scavengers handcuff a man to the roof of a building and later are forced to flee before freeing him. How will they handle leaving him there? Of course they go back but what happens is unexpected because the story is in "new" territory. So I would say this story has been well adapted and is engrossing.

I'm enjoying the show, except that the gore level is very high. Moving from black and white comics to full color live action makes the gore, at least to me, much harder to watch. I know I said in my last review that the kills looked a little too CGI but they are already getting better at that. Also, the zombies eating innards in broad daylight isn't fun to watch since those scenes look pretty realistic. Definitely not for kids or the faint of heart. Only two more episodes to go for this season. I will definitely watch the rest and let you know what I think.

Quick Review: The Walking Dead Episode 1

I finally got to see the first episode of The Walking Dead TV show. I was supposed to go to a bar in Annapolis to see the premiere episode on Halloween night but an eye injury prevent me from attending. Since we don't have cable and Hulu isn't hosting the episodes, I've plunked down some money at Amazon (where I had a video-on-demand gift certificate) to get the whole season. The first season is only six episodes long. Tonight they are airing episode three, so I definitely need to do some catching up. Anyway, enough excuses, onto a quick review.

Having read the first trade paperback (reviewed here), I was already familiar the story. For those of you who don't know, police officer Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma to find the dead have returned to life and are ravaging his small Georgia home town. But it's not just his home, the zombie plague is apparently everywhere. He finds this out from a father and son who take him in and fill him in on what is going on. Believing his wife and son to be in Atlanta, he heads out in search of them.

The TV show is fairly consistent with the comic so far. Some minor changes are made for dramatic effect. The storytelling is still deadly earnest and grim to the core. Director and writer Frank Darabont (who also directed The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist) does a great job bringing the comic to life (pun intended) and telling the story in an exciting, tense way. The actors are all good, though Andrew Lincoln as Rick carries the show for the first episode. You do get to meet his wife and some other survivors for a few scenes, but so far it's mostly Rick going to Atlanta. I am looking forward to future episodes if they are all this good.

The gore is pretty bad as you would expect from the source material. The zombies are horrible-looking for the most part. Some seem like they are more recently turned and not decayed with organs hanging out. One striking thing is when zombies are shot with guns. The effects definitely look like CGI, but that may be a good thing. If they were too realistic, it would be unbelievably grim to watch. The show is rated TV-14 and I definitely would not recommend it for younger viewers.

Later on I may provide a review or feedback about watching through Amazon's video on demand player once I've had more experience with it. Here's what the player looks like in case you can't wait:

click on the image to see it larger