In this week's Expatica cinema section - in collaboration with Picturenose - James Drew reviews The Mist plus a selection of other films now on release across Europe.

The Mist

As someone who has read Stephen King since I was around 11 years old, who has grown up loving (and loving being scared by) the man's work, from Carrie, through The Shining via his Dark Tower cycle (and around 40 more novels all told) to his most recent, Lisey's Story, my reaction to the prospect of another King big-screen adaptation has, over the years, largely moved from child-like excitement to confused disappointment to weary boredom and, often, outright anger.

While initially dismissed as just another pulp hack during the horror boom of the 1970s and 80s, King is in fact an enormously talented writer, who, while he has largely remained in the arena of slitherings by moonlight, has nevertheless emerged as a true Dickens of his own generation – a peerless chronicler of modern humanity's terrors and mores.

And, for his efforts, how does Hollywood frequently treat his work? Horribly. Right from the start, for every Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980) or The Dead Zone (1983), there have been two or three examples of a Cujo (1983), Children of the Corn (1984), Hearts in Atlantis (2001) or Dreamcatcher (2003).

Thank God, then, for Frank Darabont. Having already filmed King's more mainstream works The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999) to great acclaim, he now turns on all his jets and, with The Mist, has produced what is perhaps the finest SK horror adaptation, period.

Based on a novella originally published in the mid-1980s collection Dark Forces, the story opens in the wake of the biggest storm to hit Maine in decades; the following day, surveying the damage to his home, Dave Drayton (Thomas Jane) notices a strange mist on the lake, but thinks nothing of it. When he takes his son Billy (Nathan Gamble) and his neighbor Brent Norton (Andre Braugher) to the supermarket, leaving his wife Stephanie (Kelly Collins Lintz) at the house, the three see the army, firefighters and police heading toward the mist, which is spreading. A rumoured secret military plan, Project Arrowhead, is mentioned.

At the store, everything seems normal until an old man (Jeffery Demunn) runs in with a bloody nose: "There's something in the mist!" He's not wrong. A catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions has arrived at the door of the 80 or so people trapped in the shop – but will they have more to fear from the terrors lurking outside, the pseudo-religious madness of Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Wallace) who's calling on the group to face 'the end of times', or the darkness in their own hearts as the microcosmic society begins to break down?

'It's unapologetically a horror – I'm not messing around with namby-pamby definitions', as Darabont himself has said. And The Mist works brilliantly as a full-on screamer, thanks to a premise that's both simple and sophisticated (monsters inside and out), sterling work from Jane as the nominal hero figure Drayton and young Gamble as his son, plus an electrifying performance from Wallace as the mad preacher. The Mist also succeeds because, like all great examples of the art form, it reveals just enough, at key points throughout its running length, to suggest that whatever the mist is actually hiding is going to be far, far worse than you could possibly imagine. The S/FX have come in for some criticism – pooh, pooh. It would be interesting to wonder just what such critics would expect Lovecraftian creatures from another dimension to actually look like – realistic, maybe? Hmmm.

Frankly, for this reviewer, the dread factor was not diminished even slightly by the director opening the door (just a crack) on his Cthulhu-esque monstrosities – and the picture races at breakneck speed through sublime set-piece after set-piece, with nary a misstep – DAVID: 'I count four. She's preaching to them right now. By noon she'll have four more. By tomorrow night, when those things come back, she'll have a congregation. Then we can start worrying about who she's gonna sacrifice to make it all better...My little boy?'

Stephen King himself, who never quite bought the 'the most frightening things are always unseen' dictat, has already expressed his enormous approval of the film, and furthermore, paid Darabont the ultimate compliment: 'I wish I'd thought of that ending.' The novella's denoument was left open – the film's, far from it. As King himself has said of his own horror motivation: 'Take something that's bad, and make it worse.' You'll know what I mean, when you've seen it.

Take a bow, Mr Darabont.
127 mins.


Les Femmes de l'ombre

Daring gels go undercover against the Nazis to conceal Allied plans for the D-Day invasion in Les Femmes de l'ombre, an old-fashioned adventure with stars that scintillate but a script that's more than a little dull. Director Jean-Paul Salome (Arsène Lupin (2004)), takes heroic partisan leader Lise Villameur as his inspiration, with the fictional main character Louise Desfontaines blending into the real Villameur, though the latter's actual story has been radically altered. Louise (Sophie Marceau) arrives in London, where she is given orders by spymaster Maurice Buckmaster (Colin David Reese) to round up some female agents. Their mission: Rescue a wounded British geologist (Conrad Cecil) from a hospital in occupied France before the Nazis figure out who he is and torture him for information on D-Day.

Tough prostitute Jeanne (Julie Depardieu), explosives expert Gaelle (Deborah Francois) and, finally, showgirl Suzy (Marie Gillain), are along for the ride. All very well as a tribute to unsung Resistance heroes, but more than a little formulaic.

116 mins.


27 Dresses

Insipid romantic comedy that fails despite the star quality of its lead, Katherine Heigl.

Her really not-so-plain Jane is the owner of those 27 dresses, a perennial bridesmaid who has kept them all crushed into the closet of her New York apartment in hopes of one day being the belle of the ball.


Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna brings absolutely nothing new to the wedding movie table, and matters aren't helped any by Anne Fletcher's flat, pedestrian direction.

107 mins.


10,000 BC

In a remote, prehistoric mountain tribe, young mammoth hunter D'Leh (Steven Strait), has found his heart's passion - the beautiful Evolet (Camilla Belle). When a band of mysterious warlords raid his village and kidnap Evolet, D'Leh is forced to lead a small group of hunters to pursue the warlords to the end of the world to save her. Roland Emmerich (Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998)) offers an exciting visual feast, with savage, beaked jungle beasts and giant sabre-tooth tiger all making breathtaking appearances, but the human interaction, predictably, is not on the same level. So they're arguing over a girl? How little things have changed...

109 mins.

'Expatica's weekly cinema-review section is brought to you in collaboration with Picturenose.com'  

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(expatica 2008)