When talking with others about Steven King's
The Mist,
i'm always surprised at how much people hate this movie. I thought it got great reviews but I think there are 2 reasons someone may really despise
The Mist:
1) It's technically a monster movie with giant bugs and
octopi. It's hard for many people to take a movie with giant bugs and
octopi for what it is even if it is Steven King. Therefore, they blow this off as just another lame monster movie that ripped off of every previous one.
2) The downer ending. Most American movies let the audience leave satisfied.
Infact they had to change the ending of
The Descent just to release it in America. However,
The Mist has an extremely unsatisfying ending too. The type of ending that makes you angry and sad. I too, was pretty unsatisfied with the ending. But I can also appreciate something different every now and then.
So thank you,
The Mist, for biting the bullet and risking being a hated movie for a more shocking and thought-provoking ending.
The only thing that would have made
The Mist better in my mind was if we learned the fate of every character, because I really could NOT f*
cking stand that Norton character and
i'd sleep much better if I knew for a fact he died in this movie (well,
i'm being dramatic). I'd rather deal with the acidic web-spewing spiders than deal with a stuck-up, stubborn old man like Norton any day. I picked up racist vibes from this character and he was too annoying with his
irrational defensiveness. But I do like that he acted this way because of the disaster situation.
Stubborn doubt was a strong theme in
The Mist. Every time someone would say something about the mist or what was out there, nobody would believe a damn thing. You as the viewer just want to slap nearly everyone in there. For one thing, this movie definitely can bring out emotion for the characters whether it be good or bad. I wasn't really rooting for anyone except maybe the funny old lady who was throwing cans of peas and the dude from
Battlestar Galactica.
Here's the
spoilerific rundown of the characters, the key events, the victims and the survivors!
Meet the hero:
David
Drayton. He's a commercial artist who works on movie posters (I love that he had a movie poster of
The Thing hanging in his studio).
David lives by the lake with his wife, Stephanie, and his 5 year old son, Billy. A large storm knocks out the power and a fallen tree damages David's house. David, Billy and his neighbor Mr. Norton drive together to the local Food House grocery store to pick up some supplies. While shopping, a foggy mist engulfs the grocery store parking lot and the panic begins.
Fellow Shoppers: Amanda
Dumfries, Mrs
Carmady, Myron and Jim (left) who are friends and likely coworkers, and many others.
Food House employees: Bud the manager (right), Norm the bag boy, Ollie, Sally and Joe
Event 1:
David, Ollie, Jim, Myron and Norm the bag boy go back to investigate. They decide to send Norm outside to clear whatever might be in the way of the garage door. David figured this would be a fatal mistake and he was right.
Victim: Norm the bag-boy (left). While he's not technically the first victim of the movie he's the first slightly-significant character to go. He gets grabbed by some spiny tentacles from outside the loading garage door.
Event 2:
Mr. Norton and "his people" don't believe there is anything to fear with the mist. They don't believe that Norm is dead, nor that any of the others who walked out into the mist and yelped a horrifying scream were really dead either. So Mr. Norton and his people leave the grocery store.
Victim: The Biker (right). It's cool that this actor was in the other two Steven King movies made
by the same director. He's the only guy not given a name who made this list. He gets ripped in half when he walks out into the mist with a rope tied around his waist so the others could see how far he didn't make it.
Victim: Mr Norton (left). The most obnoxious character in the movie IMO. Disaster situations can really bring out the worst in people but this guy topped the crazy cake. Everything people were telling him about the mist he did not believe. He rode his high horse right out into the mist and
presumably was killed with a bunch of "his people" (we can only hope).
Event 3:
The survivors barricade the front glass wall of the store with stacks of dog food bags. At night, the lights inside the store attract a bunch of football-sized mosquito-looking creatures, which then attract some much larger pterodactyl-like creatures, which wind up breaking through the glass.
Victim: Tom (right). During the night attack he was swatting at giant
mosquitoes left and right, but he was no match for a pterodactyl-like creature that ripped open his neck.
Victim: Sally the clerk (left). Sally was sweet, innocent and you could tell she was loved by the community. During the night attack she got bit by a giant mosquito. The bite caused massive swelling of her neck and face; to the point of death.
Victim: Hattie (right). This older Jamie Lee Curtis lookalike basically
played the role of Billy's baby-sitter up until her death. The situation with the creatures and the guns and such were too much for her so she committed suicide by overdosing on pills after the attack subsided.
Event 4:
During the night attack, Joe was
severly burned and now on his death bed. He was in need of some medical supplies. So David, Ollie, Mike, Bobby, Irene, Dan and
Jessup venture out to the neighboring pharmacy to stock up.
Victim: Mike (left). During the quest to the pharmacy, Mike got webbed and swarmed by killer spiders.
Victim: Bobby (right)
. Bobby almost escaped the pharmacy with the
meds for his burned brother back at the Food House, but the spiders sliced open his leg and killed him on the way out.
Victim: Joe (left) He accidentally set himself on fire during the night attack. Despite the somewhat success of the pharmacy quest, Joe doesn't survive the night.
Event 5:
A large theme of
The Mist is the religious undercurrent of the stranded Survivors in the Food House. It all stems from one very religious character, Mrs.
Carmady. She sees the mist as a form of God's punishment onto humanity. By three-quarters of the way through the movie she has spread her gospel to the majority of the other survivors. As a strong group they are against David and his smaller group of people who now want to leave the grocery store. Mrs.
Carmady and her followers do not want anyone else to leave, but instead they'd rather sacrifice those who are not believers in the eyes of God.
Victims: Morales & Donaldson (right) These two soldiers knew
exactly what the mist was but they never told anyone. They hanged themselves in the storage room to escape their inevitable fates.
Victim: Private
Jessup (left). The others got news that the soldiers knew about the mist and that it was partly their fault. By this point everyone is a little crazy and religious (sorry for the redundancy). The majority of Mrs
Carmody's followers believe that if they sacrifice the last remaining soldier then God will reward them by pulling back the creatures (or something of this nature). They stab
Jessup and throw him out into the parking lot where a giant mantis-like creature nabs him.
Victim: Mrs
Carmody (right).
The break-out star of
The Mist. Marcia Gay Harden does a superb job playing the unstable "vessel of
Christ." She riled up most of the survivors in the super market and got them all believing that the mist was Gods punishment and that they could escape the disaster by giving into prayer and following Mrs
Carmady's lead. And like with most religious groups of people, this led to violence and war in the form of a knife fight. Unfortunately for Mrs
Carmady, the sole gun of the group was in the hands of a non-believer (Ollie) and Mrs
Carmody gets shot twice and killed.
Event 6:
After Mrs.
Carmady's death, the rest of her followers resist David and his group attempting to leave the grocery store. So David and his group (his son Billy, Amanda, Ollie, Dan, Irene, Myron, Cornell, and store manager Bud) flee out into the mist towards his truck.
Victim: Ollie (left). This guy worked at the Food House. He quickly teams up with the lead character, David, and also got
ahold of the only gun among the group. He sticks with David, Amanda and his boss, Bud. During their final escape to David's truck, he gets sliced in half by a giant crab-like creature.
Victim: Myron (right). Myron and Jim are two of the maintenance/janitorial workers at the
Food House. During the final escape, Myron gets killed by a giant spider that jumps on top of him.
Victim: Mr Cornell (left) joins David, Amanda, Myron, Bud, Billy, Irene, Dan and Ollie on their final attempt to escape the mist. But Mr Cornell does not make it.
Event 7:
David, his son Billy, Amanda, Dan and Irene make it to his truck. They drive back to David's house only to see that his wife, Stephanie is dead. They then drive until the truck runs out of gas. The only things they saw on their trip were more creatures and less hope.
Victims: Amanda, Billy, Dan and Irene (below). With 4 bullets left in their only gun, they decide to end their lives. David volunteers to be the odd man out and leave his fate up to the creatures. After shooting the four including his son, David then discovers that the world is not over and he just killed his son in vain. Oops. [/tragic ending]
Survivors: David, Bud, Jim (pictured up top) and many others without names.
This movie packs a lot of over-the-top, giant spiders jumping on people. It really doesn't disappoint when it comes to that. I remember seeing posters for this movie at the theater and really looking forward to it back in '02. It stars the lovely Kari Wuhrer, from my favorite movie of all time, Anaconda, so that's partly why. Oh and David Arquette's there at the end of his career and Scarlett Johansson at the beginning of hers.
Survivors do not include Joshua, the spider specialist, some ostriches, some miners, some dirt biker guys, some truck drivers, some senior citizens and most of the other townspeople for that matter. Survivors do include nearly everyone likeable and given a name for their character.
