'A Short Story Lover's Guide to Stephen King' Meets 'Based on Books' - King vs. Darabont in 'The Mist'

For the first chapter of the second book in the series A Short Story Lover's Guide to Stephen King, I thought I'd do something quirky and combine it with my dormant column Based on Books since Skeleton Crew opens with The Mist, a short story (or rather novella) as masterly written by Stephen King as legendarily adapted to film by director/writer/producer Frank Darabont.

Straight up from the start, some useful multimedia links; the movie, a good audiobook narration, a ZBS radio drama, and some fun fan art. There is a TV series somewhere too, but I'm personally not crazy about series/serializations, so you need to find where to stream it yourself.

I WILL SPOIL EVERYTHING SO READ THE BOOK, WATCH THE MOVIE BEFORE READING AND DON'T BLAME ME! 

The Mist, novella (Originally published in Dark Forces, 1980)

It all starts with a storm, as it often does in King books. The storm is of importance for him, it is a mini-apocalypse to reset civilization, to make everything collapse, if only for a limited time as in The Storm of the Century, The Shining, Rat (short story in If It Bleeds) or One for the Road, where the storm creates a time frame of isolation for his characters to be trapped in, in which terrible things can and will happen. The storm can also mark the end to terrifying stories, as in Bag of Bones or Revival; or, it can be only the beginning of a never-ending terror, of the mist; a creeping, living blanket of white opaque encasing uncanny sounds and movements, trapping people wherever they are.

That's how artist David Drayton, his little son Billy and his neighbor Brent Norton end up stuck in the local supermarket with a bunch of other people after a storm cuts off electricity and cuts them off from a world now enveloped in a thick mist. Rumor is on the street that there has been top secret military experimentation going on under the name of Project Arrowhead, but it's all words, nobody knows if the project even exists, if it's the source for the mist nor what the project is even about. 

So, we have a certain set of characters who find themselves involuntarily locked up in a space with comfortably limited resources to live on - very stressful, but not imminently lethal. They primarily try to figure out the dangers and secrets of the mist, assess the dimension of the danger lurking outside, and it doesn't look good. During the few attempts at getting help or bettering their living conditions, tentacles snatch people out, huge spider-like creatures attack, gigantic insects crawl around the store - and they themselves are prey to even bigger and ginormous flying creatures. It's like a prehistoric nightmare grown to extreme dimensions.  

At the same time they try to cope with the ever growing suspense indoors; the bitching, and fear, and fearmongering, and power plays, and desperation; - all the bloodthirsty creatures are nothing compared to the tension going on between the trapped humans. The friction between a hysteric religious movement and a handful of reasonable people escalates sneakily and blows up, ending in the demand for a blood sacrifice to sooth the gods. The sensible people need to decide between the hell within and the murderous biosphere outside. They prefer the outlandish animals, but at what cost?

Not sure of how to best categorize the horror in The Mist (Creature feature? Cosmic? Military?), my personal tendency goes toward psychological horror - being stuck in a supermarket with a bunch of religious fanatics surpasses even Sartre's definition of hell. Current events confirm the accuracy of the ways King estimates a society breaking under duress as he imagines three divisions: the religious fanatics, the deniers of truth (the so-called Flat-Earth-Society), and finally the people with common sense. It is reminiscent of Golding's Lord of Flies in that sense.

Terror is the widening of perspective and perception. 

A mist, a curtain that literally as well as metaphorically clouds the vision isolates, and even kills. Apart from being a terrible "unknown", it stands for any dire state inspiring fear and terror that pushes societies into emergency states; natural disasters, pandemics, civil wars - and society reacts almost always the same way by dividing itself into parts; left or right, scientific or religious, fanatic or moderate etc. The prophetic way the supermarket survivors in The Mist divide, is an almost one-to-one copy of what happened during and after the COVID19 pandemic, I dare say in many countries, not only US.

On a personal level, the novella can also be seen as one big try to cope with a traumatic situation, or three different ways of struggling for sanity, and three different types of survivors bonding amongst each other. The Flat-Earthers pretty firmly deny the existence of any supernatural being living behind the supermarket door because it defies their understanding of reality (and they are the first ones to die); the religious fanatics following Mrs. Carmody as their prophet and listen to her doomsday rhetoric are a group of people who fall back into archaic traditions by explaining the overwhelming with the same numinous structure they have always known; and finally the common sensers, a group of people who see the situation as it is without attributing to it any religious or other meaning, and basically look for the best way to survive, taking risks and casualties when necessary. They are ultimately the only group who, in the open-end King offers, have something like a chance to make it through (this is important especially for the comparison to the film ending).

A misty, cloudy, fearful environment feeds religious fanatics, with whom King seems to have a special beef with, since this is not the only place he criticizes religion, Carrie and Revival come to mind from the top of my head. Meanwhile King is not even an atheist or agnostic, he's indeed a religious person, or let's say, a person who believes, a person of faith. I like that people have the courage to criticize the social structures they are part of, such as religion or government, it is a core aspect of a democracy, which many people forget. It also puts King on the liberal side of the scale and proves, once again, that he has always been political. I'm stating this loudly for the ones in the back, because it has come to my attention that many readers are surprised that he wrote Holly and took a very clear side in it, but King has always been political, and not recently turned liberal.

Back to the book, let's look at a problematic aspect of this story foreshadowing similar questionable choices that can be found throughout the whole collection. Main character David Drayton's attitude towards women sucks. He displays an unpleasant virility that almost objectifies women. From being irritated by the presence of his neighbor (whom he doesn't like at all) around his wife, controlling how he looks at her, but then at the first opportunity away from home and under a little stress (I think they were in the supermarket for like two days?) sleeping with Amanda Dunfrey, who, by the way, has so beautiful green eyes that he's jealous of the "proprietor" of them - he means her husband, as if he owns her and her body parts. It made me really not like him at all and I'll be speaking about how I'm glad Ferenc Darabont made different choices by weeding out these parts of him.

I have to say that except for the one person who matters the most, the character building is amazing, from the kid to the very quintessentially evil villain Mrs. Carmody, everyone fit where they belong to. This is, again, one of those King writings where the intensity of the suspension gradually increases and I find the psychology fitting. Being the grandchild of a generation who had to hide in bunkers during bombings, this story and the psychology of the people, and yes, even the having sex when there's danger outside, reminded me a little of stories from our grandparents and seems realistic (for a layperson) from a psychological point of view.

Special attention goes to Mrs. Reppler who attacks giant mosquitos with a bottle of Raid, I love her. 

The Mist (2007, Dir. Frank Darabont)

The movie does a number of changes to the story, some minor, and some fundamental. Is it for the better, though? Let's see.

Since I have been extensively complaining about how David Drayton was written in the novella, that's my starting point in this comparative section, as there are some essential changes to his nature in the film which basically elevate him. First of all - none of those silly insecurities and policing who looked at the wife in what way, the Film-David is much more grounded in who he is and in his relationship. He takes over all the good qualities Book-David has, like his common sense, his sense of justice, and choosing an actor looking like Thomas Jane, Darabont creates the quintessential all-American hero.

Darabont is also expert in translating the very American anti-heroes or perceived antagonists unto the screen. I mean, the hateability of Mrs. Carmody is obvious, but the outsider-ness of Drayton's neighbor, Brent Norton, played by the late André Braughter is also highlighted in clever ways. We know that he was involved in a lawsuit with Drayton concerning some tree or land issue, so they're not the best of friends. He isn't a permanent resident of the town, he is some hot-shot New Yorker, I think a lawyer, and his wife recently died, so he's single. There's lots going on on that front and to make all his differences even more visible, Darabont uses the Othello effect by casting a Black man in an All-White town. He is an outsider in the book through different aspects, and quite frankly unlikable, not so in the movie, since Darabont takes his edges off a little while still leaving some fuel to ignite during the lockdown. I somewhat relate to Norton, because in the face of something outrageous, of something inconceivably horrible, I personally tend to disbelief, or even escapism, so he's not really a hate figure, only a sort of an antagonist.

I also prefer Darabont's choice of David and Amanda not having a sexual affair, but bonding on a rather practical, friendship/teamwork level. Again, this takes off the edge of a controversial point in the book, making both Amanda and Drayton more likable.

In all King's work the psychology of his characters and it morphing into different shapes under duress plays a primary role. And all his characters, main or not, have morally questionable sides to them; they cheat on their loved ones, they have addictions, they have opportunistic tendencies, but in the end, it is their decision to rise above themselves which makes them the hero of their stories, and that is how I see Drayton. Hollywood tends to portray in more black and white terms, it's easier to accept an unproblematic hero as they are, so you can root for them in a short span of time. Both choices make sense in their own way.

The two main alterations made in the film concern the origin of the mist, and, of course, that ending. We all know the mist and the creatures it accommodates are most probably created in a military experiment named Project Arrowhead. The novella gives a few gossips heard here and there, a few vague possibilities as to what the project is about, proven right only through the mysterious suicide of the two soldiers trapped in the supermarket. They must have known something, that the situation is hopeless and even worse than it appears, and they knew it because they were military men. The film, on the other hand, ensures clarity by voicing that it is about portals that open to different dimensions, possibly Lovecraftian in nature.

 

 

You know how I mention above Darabont taking off the edges of various situations or characters? Well, I guess, he took all those edges to build one big "arrowhead" to pierce your heart in the end, because that's one of the grimmest endings in horror history!

In the novella, the survivors manage to escape and drive away, and faintly hearing the word "Hartford" on the radio, Drayton hopes that it could be a safer place, so he decides they have enough gas to go there. In the film, on the other hand, Darabont puts all his bets on a shock factor; the survivors make it out of the supermarket, but realizing that they have no chance of survival in a world like this, they decide that Drayton uses his remaining four bullets to kill everybody, including his son, and he does so. Traumatized, he leaves the car with the intention of letting the monsters in the mist kill him. He then sees that the mist clearing, giving way to military vehicles driving through (with a lady from the supermarket who decided to go to her children sitting in the vehicle with her children). Realizing that the military has taken over and the nightmare is ending, equals realizing that he killed his companions for nothing and had he waited five minutes all of them would have been saved. The weight of guilt and despair make Drayton fall on his knees and scream as loud as he can.

I admit that when I first saw the movie ending I thought it was silly, just because the gesture of the actor of falling on his knees and shouting towards heavens (the rain and thunder were missing in that scene, but it would possibly have been too unrealistic with the mist and all) is so super melodramatic that I had to laugh a little. Add to it that, although I'm not a very big fan of open endings, I actually quite like King's open ending here, which offers enough hope that there are other people somewhere, but not too much hope that the reader is sure that everything is going to be alright. In time, I got used to Darabont's ending, and I reckon that King's ending wouldn't have worked on film. Although King loved the movie ending and said "The ending is such a jolt—wham! It's frightening. But people who go to see a horror movie don't necessarily want to be sent out with a Pollyanna ending." I personally don't agree the novella has a happy ending, frankly. In the movie, the mist situation seems resolved and the army people look like they are sending the creatures back to where they came from, while in the book the eldritch universe keeps living on. There are two levels of terrors represented, in the novella it's the cosmic horror of this universe who has entered our world, while in the film it's the psychological terror of a man who took a devastation decision he will never recover from.

There's no need to state how much I love this story, both in print and in film. The universe building is insanely good, and so are the character arcs (there are so many more characters and details I haven't talked about here, like Ollie, for example, or the way Drayton looks at his wife one last time, or how the child is portrayed like an actual child - both in book and film - and not like an adult in the body of a child), the feelings of anger, frustration, claustrophobia and hope it evokes, but most of all, I love the ending King wrote. So that plays a role in my verdict of who did it better, King or Darabont.

My final verdict is that King wins this round.

Next up in The Short Story Lover's Guide to Stephen King: Here There Be Tygers, Cain Rose Up, Mrs. Todd's Shortcut, and The Jaunt.