Frank Darabont's film of King's "The Mist"

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Frank Darabont's film of King's "The Mist"

Posted: 9/19/15 at 10:38pm

On cable tonight. Damn. As scary if not scarier than it was in 2007. With a terrific performance by Marcia Gay Harden as a post-Margaret White (pre 2015 Kim Davis, eerily). Plus Jeffrey DeMunn, Francis Sternhagen, and the ever-"Hung" Thomas Jane. Really thrilling, creepy, one of the best adaptations of King's work, by any standared.

"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/19/15 at 11:10pm

I love the film as a film, as an adaptation of a King story that genuinely improves on the original, and as a bit of trivia.

Fun fact: "The Mist" was a trial run for Frank Darabont's "The Walking Dead," an ensemble disaster story cast with many of the same performers. Thomas Jane was the first choice for Rick Grimes on "Walking Dead," but Jane had another commitment (I think for another season of "Hung" and couldn't do the AMC show, so the role was recast.

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/19/15 at 11:28pm

One of the more controversial film endings in recent memory, but such a brave and amazing ending it was.

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/19/15 at 11:29pm

Try watching The Director's Version. Same movie but in black and white, the way that Darabont intended. It's actually quite effective and makes a big difference in the overall tone of the film.

Darabont’s director’s cut doesn’t feature any additional scenes, but is in black and white (he couldn’t get the studio to go for black and white for theatrical). The light grey mist, the wash of emptiness across the frame, is perfect. Darabont’s got some great shots here (some where it’s clear he wasn’t composing for black and white and some where it doesn’t make sense he’d be doing it for color).

Watching this in black and white gives the movie a whole new layer of magic. It takes the focus off of the special effects and let's you get more involved in the characters. The monsters sometimes even looked like classic Harryhausen stop motion animation because of it. The cast is absolutely brilliant and it is kind of funny how many of these actor's Frank Darabont made appear on "The Walking Dead" by now. Speaking of Darabont: The combination of him and Stephen King is pretty much unbeatable in my book.

Updated On: 9/19/15 at 11:29 PM

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/20/15 at 12:02am

Love the novella, hate the movie. The movie's ending is truly awful, a horrible, cynical "gotcha" that wasn't earned (plus it made the mist appear to be not such a big problem after all, whereas King's story makes it seem like it's the end of humanity's reign on earth. King had the much better ending, despite what he himself thinks).

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/20/15 at 12:05am

I actually really like the ending to the movie. I found it to be powerful and uncompromising. Different strokes.

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/20/15 at 1:55am

I think the ending is what makes this movie for me. I have always found movie to be a bit of a homage to the great horror films of the 50s and 60s. It proves once again, sometimes what we don't see is more frightening then what we do.

I wish I had known it was on tonight, It is time for another viewing.

Those Blocked: SueStorm. N2N Nate. Good riddence to stupid! Rad-Z, shill begone!

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/20/15 at 7:25am

One of my faves! And I also love the ending.

I read last week that they're turning it into a TV show.

....but the world goes 'round

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/20/15 at 9:55am

I love the ending too but I would have preferred a more ambiguous one with him just walking off into the mist.

#10

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/20/15 at 12:57pm

Stephen King readers who have delved deeper into his work know that the Mist eventually IS contained and mastered, as the end of the film shows. The mist is a "thinny," an accidental gap into a transdimensional universe that exists as a sentient destructive force. Several of them, including the one from "The Mist" appear in the Dark Tower series.

#11

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/20/15 at 1:11pm

I thought it had some great suspense sequences but was unfortunately filled with King's rather thin characters and Darabont's trademark humorlessness. As for the ending, I found it absurdly heavy-handed. Jesus, let a big bug movie be a big bug movie! Instead we get Greek tragic gravitas with that embarrassing earmark of '00's American filmmaking trying to be all serious and s**t: The soundtrack trotting out the Middle Eastern woman doing her best "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH" wail/singing.

"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” ~ Muhammad Ali

#12

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/20/15 at 3:08pm

That ambiguously Middle-Eastern wailing song is "The Hosts of Seraphim" by Dead Can Dance, a goth-New Age band whose entire genre can be summed up as "sad foreign keening for use in action sequences."

#13

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/20/15 at 3:46pm

darquegk said: "Stephen King readers who have delved deeper into his work know that the Mist eventually IS contained and mastered, as the end of the film shows. The mist is a "thinny," an accidental gap into a transdimensional universe that exists as a sentient destructive force. Several of them, including the one from "The Mist" appear in the Dark Tower series.

But that has nothing to do with the novella as a self-contained work.

#14

Frank Darabont's film of King's

Posted: 9/23/15 at 10:16am

Absolutely loved this film adaptation of one of my favorite King stories...until the ending, which pretty much ruins the entire film for me. I'd watch it again, but stop it just before that ridiculous and pointless ending. Ugh.

I love the ending too but I would have preferred a more ambiguous one with him just walking off into the mist.

The ambiguous ending is how the novella ended, which was a lot scarier than the calculated irony of the film. It was SO deliberate and heavy-handed, and for what? Why? It seemed the intent was simply just to mimic the novel as closely as possible and then piss on it in order to mark it with their scent.

"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian

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