The Mist has always been one of my favorite
Stephen King stories. For me it tapped into a fear of civilized society being
overtaken by a sudden disaster, and how an every day trip to the supermarket
could turn into a frightening fight for survival. But what made it stand out
was the way it presented this fear in a totally unique, visceral, and visual
way by engulfing the town in a physical manifestation of the unknown – a
maddening, mysterious mist, filled with unseen monsters bent on tearing apart
the town’s inhabitants. What could possibly be more frightening?
In the
post-new-millennium era where our fascination with ‘end times’ fiction shows no
signs of slowing, The Mist, published in the early 80’s, stands out as a
frightful premonition of pop culture’s present obsession with the end of the
world. So you would think The Mist’s TV adaptation would not only be
timely, but considering the quality of the source material, a total slam-dunk
in today’s apocalypse-obsessed age. The Frank Darabont movie adaptation has
become a horror classic, so The Mist more than proved itself capable of
being translated from novel to film. What could go wrong?
[Yep -
spoiler alert!]
Well, as I
watched the first episode of The Mist TV series, my excitement turned to
complete disappointment soon after the mist rolled into town. As the mist
claimed its first victim (a clueless cop taking a selfie in the mist no less! I
really can’t stand the idiot victim trope! g.s.) I suddenly realized the mist had no
monsters in it. Not one friggin’ monster! The TV Mist had totally missed
the point of the mist! The heart of the mist’s terror – a mysterious fog
harboring a host of other-worldly creatures, unseen until it was far too late –
had been lost.
The writers
instead turned the mist into some sort of reactive supernatural force that
probes your deepest fears and then tears you apart with its physical
manifestation. While interesting, the execution never proved remotely
terrifying, just occasionally gross. Why they chose to tool around with this
fundamental concept is beyond me. The monsters were the coolest part of
the entire story, and discarding them for some sort of vengeful fog was the biggest mistake of the new
series.
The next misstep the TV Mist took was not having a suspenseful, tense, or even coherent narrative. In the novel, I was fascinated to watch the characters devolve from a group
of civilized townsfolk into a desperate, murderous mob as the horror of their
situation sunk in. The TV Mist tried to follow suit, setting up tons of
potential tension amongst the town’s inhabitants: Alex’s alleged rape by Jay,
Jonah’s memory loss and his connection to Arrowhead, and Mia’s drug addiction
and criminal past. Frustratingly, none of these scenarios played out in a
coherent or interesting way, and all just ended up feeling pointless. Jay is
exonerated but then randomly killed; Jonah is captured by an Arrowhead soldier
only to be inexplicably released (because of Jonah’s higher rank? What?); Mia’s
betrayal of the group to grab some dope and cash goes nowhere and falls flat.
Perhaps the
most disappointing scene was when Eve confessed to the angry mob that Conner
was Alex’s dad. None of the actors had the chops to pull off the emotional
weight of that scene, and the crowds’ reaction to the news seemed random and
non-sensical. Eve wasn’t set up properly as the pariah she needed to be for the
town to turn on her and Alex. The whole situation inside the mall seemed forced
as the writers pushed the plot forward with cardboard characters and weak
motives, instead of really digging into the characters and letting their
development allow the story to unfold.
And perhaps
most frustrating to watch was Adrian’s transformation from victim to villain.
Did it really have to be the one LBGT character who turns out to be the evil
psycho, while the pretty boy quarterback gets exonerated as the hero? It made
me sigh internally that the series was brave enough to introduce a gay
character but backward enough to then turn around and make him the bad guy.
The one
shining light in the mist (sorry) was Frances Conroy as Natalie Raven. Her
subtle transformation from docile garden-loving hippie to calculating
instrument of the mist was fantastic to watch. But once again, the writers set
up something interesting and then let it fall totally flat. Natalie’s arrival
at the mall should have been her momentous ascension to messiah of the mist,
but instead the writers just randomly killed her off. (What?!) Why did the mist
suddenly turn on its chosen disciple after sparing her when she faced off
against Father Romanov? It was the final random kick in the teeth that made me
totally not care to watch season two (if there is one.)
Considering
the source material was quite short, the challenges of transcribing The Mist
into a 10-hour series are obvious. But in trying to take the story in a different
direction, the writers totally lost what made the original novella so cool –
the fear of unseen, otherworldly predators; the fear of neighbors turning on
each other in the face of a local disaster; the fear of the unknown. When I saw
The Mist pop up on my Netflix feed, I was super excited and thrilled to
watch it. Despite excellent production values, and the creepiest mist effects
you’d ever see, after slogging through 10 hours of disappointing writing and
acting, I think this new Mist totally missed. Don’t pass Go. Don’t
collect $200. And don’t watch this pile of garbage.
G.S.
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