The Mist (2007)

"People are basically good, decent. My god, we're a civilised society."

"Sure, as long as the machines are workin' and you can dial 911, but you take those things away, you throw people in the dark, you scare the shit out of them, no more rules, you'll see how primitive they get."

"You scare people badly enough, you can get 'em to do anything. They'll turn to whoever promises a solution, or whatever."

"As a species, we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?"

And thus is summed up The Mist in 109 words. What happens when a few dozen terrified Americans are crammed together in a supermarket and hemmed in by a thick, otherworldly mist that brings death to all who step into it? They turn on each other, in horrible, inhuman ways.

When a powerful storm hits the small town of Bridgton, Maine, David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his son Billy (Nathan Gamble) head into town to pick up some supplies and materials to repair the storm damage to their house. David's wife Stephanie (Kelly Lintz) stays at home but he gives a lift to their neighbour, Brent (Andre Braugher). A lawyer from New York with a holiday home in the town, Brent has previously sued the Draytons over a property dispute, which he lost. This, combined with his intransigence in the face of David's politeness and his belief that the townspeople see him as an out-of-towner who doesn't belong means the two have an uneasy relationship at best. At the supermarket, they shop and run into fellow townspeople, among them Amanda (Laurie Holden), a teacher and friend of the family; Ollie (Toby Jones), the shop's assistant manager; Dan (Jeffrey DeMunn), a friend of David's; Irene (Frances Sternhagen), an elderly retired teacher; Jim (William Sadler), a mechanic; Sally (Alexa Davalos), Billy's babysitter and an assistant at the shop; and Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), an infamous and softly-spoken townswoman whose fanatical right-wing Christian views make Rick Santorum look like a godless socialist.

As they shop, the mist, which had been rolling down from the hills, sweeps into the town and engulfs it, swallowing up the supermarket and everything in sight of it. As the townspeople gawp out of the shop's large front windows at the impenetrable mist, people run in from the car park and when Dan bursts in with a bleeding nose and tales of something in the mist attacking people, panic sets in. Some decide to run for it, trying to make it to their cars before whatever is in the mist can get to them. They don't make it, their screams carrying back to the large majority who remained inside. Trapped and terrified, rifts begin to appear between the townspeople. David quickly realises the enormity of what they're facing but Brent and some of the others refuse to believe what's really outside, even when it's right in front of them. But, most insidious of all is Mrs. Carmody. She begins her sermons of hate and no-one listens to her, but when the things outside break through the windows and panic sets in, more and more people listen to her. She spews forth messages about the end of the world and judgement for those who refuse to repent. Slowly and surely, she and her followers become just as dangerous as the creatures that lurk outside in the mist.

What makes this film really special isn't just the otherworldly monsters but the human monsters, whether they begin that way or are scared and bullied into doing the horrific deeds they go on to commit. With the townspeople splitting between the rational, logical group led by David and the fundamentalist, fire and brimstone group led by Mrs. Carmody, the real divide that exists in America is sharply illustrated. Clearly the film is made from the point of view of the former and David and his friends are the protagonists but given a few tweaks here and there, it's easy to see how one could present Mrs. Carmody as a dedicated, devoted Christian woman just trying to do what she knows to be right. Fortunately, Marcia Gay Harden plays her perfectly. She's understated enough to be creepy and passionate enough to be persuasive, without ever crossing the line into parody. In fact, the performances are superb all round. Many of the actors are regular collaborators with director Frank Darabont so he knows exactly how to get the best out of them.

With the human monsters so effectively portrayed, and given that the film is only five years old, it's disappointing to note that the CGI for the creatures is slightly unconvincing. It's not so much the case for the larger creatures, but for the smaller and more numerous creatures, it's sometimes no better than average. Furthermore, the designs are surprisingly unimaginative. Fortunately, the mist often shrouds the creatures so it doesn't detract too much from their impact, but it is the only downside to this otherwise fine feature.

All in all though, it's still a very good film. The performances are terrific, the characters are believable and the ending is absolutely superb. Not only is it a great monster movie but as a mini-essay on the dangers of irrationality and religious fundamentalism, it simply can't be beaten.

8 out of 10.

The Inbetweeners USA 1.12 - The Dance

Mirroring the last episode of the first series of the British original, it's the end of year dance. As usual, all the funny moments have been sucked out and replaced with... well, nothing.

Instead of Will calling Mr. Gilbert "Phil" and being humiliated in front of the rest of his year, he asks to be chairman of the committee and is told "yes". That's it. Thanks to it reminding me of the brilliant moment in the original series, it was the only part that made me chuckle in an otherwise painful and laugh-free twenty-one minutes. The rest of it is the usual bag of annoying characters, bad acting and pathetic attempts at "humour".

What a waste of time this piece of shit series was. Everything that made the original series so fantastic has been completely stripped away. To even give it the same name is to piss all over the brilliance of the original series. Watered-down, badly-written, childish and incredibly unfunny, the only remarkable thing about this monstrosity is how they managed to fuck up a winning formula so badly. Everyone who was in the slightest bit responsible for this shockingly bad rip-off should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

0 out of 10.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

Guillermo del Toro is a big fan of the original TV movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. He apparently loved the film so much as a child that it inspired him to create his own horror films. After years of making his own excellent, original films, he decided to go back to the beginning and co-write and co-produce a remake of the film that started his love affair with horror and fantasy. The director's chair is filled by first-timer Troy Nixey, who was hired by del Toro on the basis of a short film he sent in to him.

Very similar to the original, the remake has two main differences. Firstly, there is an opening scene set in the house in the 1800s that sees painter Emerson Blackwood (Garry McDonald) attempt to get his child back from the creatures, only to be dragged down into the fireplace by them. Secondly, there is a new character: a young girl, who becomes the focus of the creature's attention. Ten-year-old Sally is played by Bailee Madison and moves into the large mansion with her father Alex (Guy Pearce) and her father's partner, Kim (Katie Holmes). Sally is the one who opens the grate of the fireplace in the basement and unwittingly sets the creatures loose and is the one they try and take.

Having a child become the focus of the creature's attention is an interesting move. It's a pity that it doesn't work. For starters, the metaphor from the previous film could have been turned into one about parents not believing children and making us wonder whether she really was seeing the creatures or if they're the product of her imagination, driven to despair after being sent away by her mother to live with her distant father and his girlfriend. Instead, we're told right up front that the creatures are real. There's no subtlety or hint of delusion: she's sane, they're real and the adults are morons. There's the usual cranky old caretaker who warns them not to open the fireplace but he's ignored. Secondly, we know all along that she's in no real danger. She's a little girl in a horror film. When was the last time something bad happened to a little girl? Anyone?

In contrast to the original, the creatures are not actors in laughably bad masks, they're all CGI. They're not laughably silly but they aren't in the slightest bit scary either. They're like rats crossed with goblins and about as scary as toast popping up from a toaster. If you don't like rodents, you might find them unnerving. Otherwise, you'll just wonder why people don't stamp on them or pick them up and throw them away.

Just like the original, there are irrelevant characters, namely the psychiatrist (Nicholas Bell) and Charles Jacoby (Alan Dale), and pointless scenes. In particular, the dinner party. The dinner party in the first film was a small gathering of friends before the half-way point. In the remake, it's greatly expanded and moved to the final act. Alex and Kim entertain Charles, in the hope that he will be impressed by their restoration work on the house which will lead to them being featured on the cover of a magazine which means they can sell the place for a big profit and recoup Alex's losses and avoid bankruptcy. Got all that? Good. As Alex wines and dines Charles and a dozen other nameless people, Sally pursues a creature to the library, determined to get photographic evidence of it with an old Polaroid camera. Once inside the room, the creatures lock the door and attack her. She takes lots of pictures but none of them look like they will come out clearly and all her efforts seem to have been in vain. That is, until she squashes one of them between two bookcases and its arm falls off. Success! She has incontrovertible proof! Not just its lifeless body, trapped between the two pieces of furniture, but also its newly detached limb. So, when the library door bursts open and her father and his guests come rushing in, full of concern for little Sally, do they see the body of the creature? Well, no. Does she at least show them its severed arm? Uh.... no. She just gives her father one of the pictures, which is far too blurry to see anything. Then the guests leave and she's put to bed, her father still refusing to believe her. Seriously, that's exactly what happens and it's completely fucking stupid. She has proof of the creatures' existence less than ten feet behind her but no-one notices and she doesn't tell anyone either! It's not even like she accidentally kills the creature, she deliberately squashes it and looks at it as it's arm falls off and lands on the floor. We even get a close-up of the bloody thing hitting the ground!

That's just the most egregious example of several gaping plot holes. Combine them with the pointless characters and scenes that should have ended on the cutting room floor and it sounds like this film's worse than the first one. Not quite. It still feels entirely pointless but there's no denying that the film looks absolutely superb. For starters, everything's bigger - the CGI, the house, the performances, particularly from Bailee Madison. It's just a pity that it's all wasted. It doesn't even have any good scares, something you'd expect from a horror film written and produced by Guillermo del Toro. In fact, the biggest (and probably only) jump in the film was given away in the trailer!

So, what do we have? A pointless remake of a laughably bad 1970s horror film. It's bigger, full of lavish sets and a wonderful, grand old house. The performances are much better and it's directed competently. Unfortunately, it's not in the slightest bit scary or even unnerving and the chance to make us wonder if what Sally's seeing is real or just a fantasy is wasted. It's riddled with plot holes and groaning under the weight of pointless characters and scenes that should have appeared only in the special features. It's an improvement on the original, but just barely.

4 out of 10.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)

Some horror films don't age well and boy is this one of them. Almost forty years old, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was made for television and first broadcast in early October of 1973. Directed by John Newland, who worked on a large number of TV series in the 60s and 70s, it stars Kim Darby and Jim Hutton as married couple Sally and Alex Farnham. Darby is probably best known for her role as Mattie in the John Wayne version of True Grit and Hutton appeared in a variety of films and TV series until his untimely death six years after the film was broadcast.

Sally has recently inherited a large house from her deceased grandmother so she and her husband move in and set about doing up the place. She is fascinated by the old fireplace in the basement and wants to open it up and get it working again. The house's repairman-cum-caretaker, Mr. Harris (William Demarest), tells her to forget about it, explaining that when Sally's grandfather died, her grandmother ordered him to brick the fireplace up and bolt the ash door shut, which he did. Her curiosity gets the better of her and so she opens the ash door and peers inside. It turns out that the fireplace is covering a tunnel which goes down deep into the Earth. Closing it, she goes to leave and hears voices calling to her from inside the fireplace. It turns out that small, goblin-like creatures live down beneath the house and have been set free. They terrorise and harass her, intent on dragging her down to their subterranean home and making her one of them.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is best summed up as seventy-four minutes of bad acting, uninspired direction and absolutely terrible "monster" design. Imagine the worst alien costume from old and cheaply-made episodes of Doctor Who on creatures that are six inches tall and you're still nowhere near imagining just how bad these things look. We catch our first glimpse of them as one steals Sally's napkin from her lap at a dinner party and I laughed so hard I had a coughing fit. We see them again a few minutes later while she's having a shower and they decide to "scare" her. We get a look at more of them (well, three of them. Clearly the budget was so low it would only stretch to three of these appalling costumes). They look even more ridiculous: actors in black feathery suits with ludicrous rubber masks that look like wrinkly bell ends and don't even have slits for mouths. When they talk, they bob their head up and down so you can tell which one is speaking. Otherwise, you'd have no way of knowing.

To a ten-year-old child watching this film in 1973, it would probably have been quite scary. Watching it now, it's dire. It's not just the creatures, it's the complete lack of any tension whatsoever. It seems at times that director John Newland couldn't decide whether to go for screams or laughs so he half-heartedly tries to do both. It's interesting in one respect, in that it is a decent metaphor for how women are so often ignored, their fears dismissed as nerves or unhappiness. Sally's doting husband insists that all is well and good, refusing to believe her until the shit really hits the fan. That aside, the rest of the film is really very silly and it's a strange thing to say when the film's under an hour-and-a-quarter long but so much of it is completely irrelevant. Sally's friend Joan (Barbara Anderson) and the doctor (Robert Cleaves) as well as several scenes (particularly Sally and Joan going shopping) clearly only exist to pad the film out.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark has not aged well. The interesting story and underlying metaphor are unfortunately swamped by bad acting, lazy direction and poor creature design. Only recommended for the those old enough to remember seeing it back in the early 1970s. Even then, re-watching it will probably ruin your memory of how good you thought it was. I can't even see younger viewers getting a kick out of it as they will most likely be bored by the extensive padding and totally unconvinced by the creatures.

3 out of 10.