Sunday, December 02, 2007

Worse than monsters is how you can never find just the right windshield wiper speed: "The Mist"

So yeah, I managed to find a little time to get out to the movies last week. Piggybacked it on some errands ... you know, just to keep things copasetic on the homefront. Wait. I mean, I'm the boss of the house. Yeah. If I want to go see a movie, I'll damn well see a movie! (You're OK with that, right, honey? Honey?)

As I mulled over my choices, I somehow ended up at this glorified B-movie instead of something with a little more heft, i.e. "No Country for Old Men" or "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead." The big reason was location; those two weren't showing anywhere near where I was shopping, and time was limited. I also really didn't know what either of those movies was about and how they had been received. Then again, if I had known then that Marisa Tomei shows her goodies in "Devil," I might have made a little more time. What can I say? George Costanza has good taste.

At the theaters near my house, I was left with "Beowulf" and "The Mist." My initial intrigue with "Beowulf" had long since worn off, and the movie just looked too goofy in the trailers. So I went with "The Mist," which had gotten a decent review in my local paper. Also, I vaguely recalled reading the Stephen King story of the same name long ago and thinking it was pretty good.

Our story starts out simple enough: A man and his young son are among several people in a Maine supermarket when a funky mist rolls into town, apparently carrying something deadly within its tiny drops. Put another way, people who end up in the mist don't make it out alive. This leads to folks holing up in the store and wondering just what in the hell is going on outside, especially as various otherworldly creatures start showing up.

That's the simple part. The more complicated aspect is what being trapped in the store with monsters outside does to people. Let's say it's not pretty, with some of the more reasonable folks -- as reasonable as you can be when crazya$$ sh!t starts going down -- butting heads with a religious fanatic whose case that a vengful God is behind all this gains weight over time. What seemed at first to be a plenty roomy supermarket gets smaller and smaller by the hour.

Fitting of the premise and its under-the-radar arrival in theaters, "The Mist" doesn't have many A-listers. Thomas Jane -- who I just realized has a Christopher Lambert thing going on, only more coherent -- is the dad. Andre "I was in 'Homicide,' remember?" Braugher is his jerk neighbor. Marcia Gay Harden -- an Oscar winner, mind you -- is the religious nut. Hall-of-Fame "that guy" William Sadler is a doofus. Other players include little Toby Jones as the store's assistant manager and all-around good guy, and Sherman from "American Pie" as a bagboy who really shouldn't have been so brave.

Not exactly "Ocean's Eleven," is it? Some performances are better than others. Jane is nothing too great, but give Harden credit for going balls-out. As for the guy guiding this crew, would you believe Frank Darabont? Not the first director I would have guessed when it came to horror/suspense, but it makes sense considering he's Stephen King's bud. Still, it's kind of odd that after "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile" -- plus the looked-really-bad "The Majestic" --he's helming a spook movie.

Not that Darabont did a bad job. Indeed, "The Mist" works best when the monsters aren't around, or at least before they strike. The tension in the store, the deadly silence when some of the crew venture out ... it's all handled well. Nothing amazing, but better than much of the cut-rate horror crap out there these days. And mad props to Frank D. for an ending I didn't see coming and that definitely doesn't get too touchy-feely after all the earlier carnage. That alone may have been worth the price of admission. Matinee, of course. Let's not get crazy here.

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