-
#631 – The Mist (2007)
The Mist (2007)
Film review #631
Director: Frank Darabont
SYNOPSIS: After a storm causes significant damage in a rural town in Maine, David Drayton takes his son and neighbour to a nearby supermarket for supplies. While there, a strange mist covers the building, and strange creatures lurk outside ready to kill anyone that leaves. The people trapped within the supermarket have to figure out how they are to survive both the monsters outside and the people within…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: The Mist is a 2007 film based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. The premise of the film is quite simple: after a storm rips through a rural town in Maine, David heads with his son and neighbour to a supermarket to get supplies. While there, a strange mist covers the whole town, and anyone who leaves to go out into it is killed by something lurking within. The people trapped within must band together and survive, but cracks begin to show when different people have different ideas about the situation. As the film progresses, you get a clearer sense of the horror lurking beyond the mist, but it never gets less terrifying. The film works best as a typical horror film: a good mix of gore, tension and scares that are well-paced throughout the two hour runtime. It explores its setting well, and the possibilities that could arise from it.
The weaker part of the film is the characters: while they are a large and diverse cast, nobody really has much development, and play very specific roles, David as the lead is fairly plain, and while his background is explored in the introduction, it doesn’t really offer a unique angle to be developed for the rest of the film (but I suppose your life story or job don’t really matter much when you’re trapped in a supermarket with monsters outside). The conflict that emerges between different characters obviously tries to delve into the psychological reality of the situation and how different people react under the pressure and terror of the unknown, and it doesn’t quite hit the mark. The preacher that obviously becomes the main antagonist that sees the mist as a punishment from God overpowers every scene and development by having some explanation for it, and doesn’t really give much space for anything else. I get that it’s meant to showcase the political divisiveness of its setting and how fear makes people turn against one another, but it just feels like it flattens any nuance or complexity.
The thing that perhaps polarises viewers the most is the ending: a twist that is so nihilistic that either undoes the films journey, or expertly concludes it, depending on which side you fall on to. regardless, you’ll definitely have some thoughts about it. Stephen King himself thought it was brilliant and better than the one he wrote for the novel, which was left open-ended. Personally, I didn’t know what to think about it: perhaps it needed a better performance from the lead actor to showcase his emotions to have a better impact for me. But again, it’s something you’ll have to form an opinion on yourself.
Overall, The Mist is a fairly solid horror film that has plenty going for it in terms of gore, tension and scares. It misses the mark a little in terms of character development, and being unable to dive further into the psychological terror the cast is facing due to the suffocating presence of the one the film chooses to focus on, but yeah, it’s a pretty decent horror.
-
#517 – Italian Spiderman (2007)
Italian Spiderman (2007)
Film review #517
Director: Dario Russo
SYNOPSIS: When an asteroid that falls to earth turns out to have the power to clone people, it is stolen from Professor Bernardi by Captain Maximum, who wants to use it to create his own personal army. The world’s only hope, Italian Spiderman, sets out to stop Captain Maximum and save the world before it’s too late…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Italian Spiderman is a 2007 short film, which is a parody of the various knock-offs and copyright-infringing films were made in non-English speaking countries (where the owners of the characters would probably never know the films were made in the pre-internet days). Italian Spiderman is unsurprisingly a parody of Spiderman, and in the opening we see Spiderman playing a poker game and blowing his opponents away with a shotgun, which should give you an idea of how accurate the representation of Spiderman is. The plot of the film concerns an asteroid that falls to Earth and has the power to clone people when exposed to it. This obviously attracts the attention of the evil Captain Maximum, who steals it in order to create an army to take over the world, leaving Italian Spiderman to stop him. The plot would be pretty standard for the type of films it is trying to parody, and leaves scope for all manner of ridiculous setups to occur as Italian Spiderman battles all sorts of traps and villains. Parodying films which are already absurd and ridiculous certainly presents the problem of how you add anything to the original or present it in a different way. Italian Spiderman actually handles this pretty well: it is able to throw in plenty of surprises by adding really ridiculous things out of nowhere, and also throwing just the right amount of self-awareness in to add something new with the parody. With a runtime of just thirty seven minutes, it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, and accomplishes all it can probably do in that time.
Italian Spiderman (he is never just called “spiderman,” as an example of the aforementioned self-awareness the film has), in keeping with the type of film it is parodying, doesn’t look like the typical spider-man nor does he have any of his powers. The rest of the characters fill typical inconsequential roles that nevertheless keep some semblance of structure in the film. The use of practical effects, combined with the obviously misplaced stock footage, make for some humourous setups. I imagine when this was released online in 2007 it would have been quite popular, at a time where these sort of films were just being discovered by English speaking countries. Nowadays it might have less of an impact because the original films are so easily available and just as silly, but still, Italian Spiderman is a smart parody that balances self-awareness with the original absurdity which makes the films it is parodying so infamous.
