Saturday, February 20, 2010

Week 1...The Mist

I have chosen the film The Mist, a 2007 film directed by Frank Darabont (original story by Stephen King). The main story focuses around a group of survivors which have barricaded themselves in a supermarket, hiding from the mist that has engulfed the town, bringing with it a variety of aliens/monsters. The films main focus is not the physical attack of the aliens, or the destruction they cause, but the affect they have on the survivors. The film is set in small town America and the viewer never fully knows if the ‘mist’ has affected the entire world, but you are lead to assume so.

The film convincingly displays the break down of the social hierarchy and order when faced with extreme, life threatening circumstances. We see that fear soon turns people on each other, and the significance of religion becomes a lot more prominent. One ‘preacher’ manages to convert the majority of the survivors into believing that they are experiencing the ‘end of days’. This leads to fights and even murder (or sacrifices) and makes the viewer feel that its people, more than aliens, that we should fear.

We also see an unconventional approach in that the one woman who does not listen to the ‘hero’ and does her own thing actually survives and manages to save her family. In the majority of apocalypse films, the hero is always right and manages to save the day, however in the mist he makes awful decisions that result in the deaths of many characters.

Toward the end of the film we see how the American army has managed to organise a counter attack and destroy the aliens/mist. I feel this is a running theme through many apocalyptic films, especially those dealing with alien invasion.
Whilst this film is unconventional in its approach to the genre, I feel it is n excellent apocalyptic film, especially when looking at the human, emotional side.

2 comments:

  1. This is a good and well known film, I agree that it does have some differences to many apocalyptic films, such as the hero making mistakes and how it is more focused on the survivors rather than the mist.
    Setting is a norm to apocalyptic films the supermarket being surrounded by the mist leaving the viewers and the cast to wonder the unknown, it is probably one of the films that I has seen to be so involved with religion, it just shows that in those circumstances people group together and there views and ways can become the same through fear.

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  2. I have never seen this film, however I can imagine what it is like. The format of these types of films are always the same. The idea that it is in a supermarket also feeds in the American idea of consumerism and in the case of an apocalyptic film the end of it. Mist is also great title as it gives the idea of a shroud of unknowing, much like Americans ideas about the future.

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