At The House Next Door, Ryland Walker Knight reviews The Mist. I’m perplexed by his assertions, which I’ve heard frequently elsewhere, that a) Mrs. Carmody and her religious nuts are scarier than the monsters, and b) the film is more interesting when the survivors interact than when the monsters attack. I think in both cases the answer is quite clearly “no, they’re not” and “no, it’s not,” because of how stock the characters are in both cases. We’ve seen Mrs. Carmody a million times, and nothing interesting is done with her beyond casting Marcia Gay Harden. We’ve seen a disparate group of people thrown together and forced to cooperate to survive a post-apocalyptic world of danger two million times, and usually much more interestingly than this. As I alluded to before, compare this crew and what they do to, for example, the way Ben and Cooper’s behavior and decisions challenge our preconceptions about their competence in Night of the Living Dead, or the warmly multifaceted interpersonal dynamics between Stephen, Peter, Roger, and Francine (including friendship, love, idolization, one-upsmanship, stoicism, panic, foolhardiness…) in the original Dawn of the Dead. Nothing at all like that is going on here; the one big shock is at the end, and as Knight points out, that shock is so sudden it feels like it undercuts the rest of the movie. Arguing that the characters are the best part and that the humans are the scariest part are the sorts of things one is supposed to say about a horror film, but in this case as in many, many others, including many good horror films, they’re not true.
At The Forager, Jon Hastings reviews The Transformers. For the first time he’s made me realize why I’ve been so reluctant to watch it: I was never a big Transformers kid–Star Wars, He-Man, G.I. Joe, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were my action figures/media tie-ins of choice, I think probably because the Transformers were really expensive–but in my experience their shows and their movie were really pretty weird. I remember the leaders of both sides dying and floating three-headed robot tribunals and a giant planet that ate other planets and stuff like that. Michael Bay’s vanilla “hey we’re all having fun here!!!!!!!” blockbuster mentality would never capture that weirdness and seriousness.
We’ve seen Mrs. Carmody a million times…
Yeah, but that could just as easily be said about the monster attacks… which is actually what I did say. The monsters are okay, but the CGI is kind of shoddy and quite frankly I’ve seen people get torn up and eaten a zillion times and it’s just not very thrilling anymore.
I didn’t think Carmody was the scariest part; nope, I was genuinely freaked the fuck out when Thomas Jane stepped out of that Jeep… but all the same, the human part was the part I cared about. I’ve seen the monster thing a zillion times, as I’ve said, and there’s just not much new to be offered there. The fresh takes would have to come with the humans. That The Mist didn’t all-the-way deliver on that doesn’t render the whole notion invalid.
I guess I just disagree. I think that in this post-Romero, post-Hostel stage of horror-movie history, interesting monsters WOULD be the place the fresh concepts come from. I certainly don’t think The Mist’s failure on the human front invalidates the idea that the human stuff can be the best part of a horror film–hence the examples I cited–but I do think it’s the kind of thing people say to establish their serious-critic bonafides, like focusing on political subtext and such. This is reductive enough to make me hesitant to say it, but here goes: there are literally an infinite number of stories to tell about humans under stress that don’t involve monsters or zombies or serial killers or vampires or aliens or carnivorous animals AT ALL, and I think it’d be disingenuous of me to suggest that the presence of such things isn’t what attracts me to horror as differentiated from other kinds of stories, or that success on those fronts is frequently more compelling in the context of a horror movie than success on the human front, if I had to pick one or the other.
You can find people-under-pressure stories anywhere, sure. But rarely do you see the stories go all balls-out as they do in horror, or perhaps westerns or crime stories (other favorites of mine). I admire the freedom of genre to turn symbolism literal, so it’s not just “hey, we’re all going to die someday” but “HOLY SHIT THERE ARE ZOMBIES EVERYWHERE AND THEY WILL KILL US WITHIN 12 HOURS.”
But it’s not that I only go for social commentary. The reasons I found that the best/most interesting part of The Mist was 1) shoddy CGI, and 2) it was so clearly made in the vein of a Romero film that it built my expectations in that direction. Unlike, say, the remake of Dawn of the Dead, which I love dearly simply for its sheer entertainment value and ability to scare the fucking pants off me and… oh yeah, also to make me laugh from time to time. And the zombie gore and scares, because goddamn.
DotD Nouveau set up different expectations for me, with its virtuoso opening sequences, and so that’s how I appreciated it. The Mist seemed to be going more social, so that’s what I responded to there. Agreeing to disagree is fine, but I vehemently disagree that people liking the social aspect more is some kind of posturing.
It’s clear our understanding and experience of _The Mist_ was different, which is cool since I was not that generous to the film. I think it fine, really, but not that “good,” whatever that means. And I, too, appreciate that its monsters strike real fear — that the film is serious about its terror — despite the bad CGI and the last reel. So I thought I’d join your conversation with the film a little more explicitly. I was arguing for the quality of the cast, not the characters, but I understand your misgivings. In the most basic sense: I do not think the picture works all that well (as a whole; as you have argued, its parts work, and only so well), or has much to offer, really, beyond its attractive casting choices. (Were ours a world where Andre Braugher was a star! Anybody remember how fucking good he was on _Homicide_ before Pembelton’s story got so silly?) Part of why I think the film does not work is because its characters are not as interesting as its cast. The drama is bald and ostentatious, however effective Darabont’s filmmaking (and not his writing) is at getting me to hate Mrs. Carmody, and Marcia Gay Harden’s perpetual shrew typecasting. (Am I off base there? Please tell me I am.) That said, I still found time to write and think about the picture so it’s gotta be worth something. If anything, it’s worth helping me remember why I like other horror pictures better, like this year’s _28 Weeks Later_, which has an attractive cast, too, but isn’t really interested in character, just big themes and big affect. It does not quite succeed either, I think, as I found it to beg to be read allegorically, not metaphorically. Which is not to say that allegory is outright bad but that Fresnadillo’s film offers a narrow allegory-argument. Maybe it’s that: I’m interested in films posing their arguments as questions, or offering an invitation to conversation. So even if I don’t this _The Mist_ is all that good, or that it does all it can to end the conversation surrounding its argument, this here exchange is good. So thank you, Sean.
Ha, oops: that “this” there at the end should clearly be “think.”
Also: it’ll be interesting to see what you think of _There Will Be Blood_.
Ken:
I definitely don’t think it’s ALWAYS posturing. I definitely think it SOMETIMES is. More frequently, I think it’s just a comfortable way for critics to approach horror movies, even ones that don’t reward that approach.
Ryland:
Awesome of you to drop by! I’m certainly with you on the film’s strong cast, who really made the most of their stock roles. Tom Jane didn’t wow me, except when he was really tearing into the shock and grief stuff, and obviously Harden was hamstrung by what she was given, but all the supporting players were entertaining and convincing. Braugher, man–a million times better than the character in the story was. Instead of coming across like a Flat-Earther, he truly did seem like the last rational man in a sea of crazy people.
And it’s funny to hear you talk about how much the film has given you to, uh, talk about–I’ve found much the same thing. (Obviously!)
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