Nathan Gamble – Through the Shattered Lens

Based on a novella by Stephen King, The Mist opens the morning after a sudden thunderstorm in Maine. Artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) steps outside and sees that a tree has crashed through one of his front windows. Meanwhile, his neighbor, attorney Brent Norton (Andre Braugher), stares at the tree that has crushed his car. Though David and Brent are not exactly on friendly terms, the storm briefly brings them together. When David says that he’s going into town to pick up supplies, Norton asks if he can come with him. David’s wife stays back at the house while David drives his son (Nathan Gamble) and Brent to the local grocery store. Before David leaves, he notices a thick mist moving over a nearby lake.

The entire town is without power and the grocery store is crowded. Three soldiers, who are picking up supplies before going on leave, are told that the leave has been abruptly canceled. Once the mist surrounds the store, it soon becomes obvious why that is. There are monsters in the mist and David, Norton, and several others find themselves trapped in the store. Going outside, as some insist on doing, only leads to death at the hands of the Lovecraftian monsters that inhabit the mist.

The Mist was first released in 2007 and I have to admit that I didn’t care much for it the first time that I saw it. I thought that some of the performances were a bit too histrionic and the film’s dark ending was almost too portentous to be credible. When I first saw it, I thought the film was almost trying too hard with the tragic conclusion. However, when I recently rewatched the film, I discovered that it had grown on me. I was better able to appreciate the fact that the monsters were both ludicrous and deadly at the same time. Performances that once seemed over-the-top in 2007 now seemed almost subtle when compared to how I’ve seen people actually behave in the real world over the past ten years. Once you’ve been yelled at for not wearing a mask while jogging, it’s a lot easier to buy the idea of a bunch of people in a grocery store losing their collective minds. Even the film’s dark ending now seemed like the only honest way the film could have ended.

The Mist is a film that plays much differently in a post-COVID world. The idea of innocent people losing their lives because of an accident at a government lab no longer seems all that unbelievable. The argument about whether or not to leave the store mirrored many of the same arguments that I heard during the COVID lockdowns. If Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) and her followers originally seemed like standard Stephen King religious fanatics, Carmody now brings to mind the loathsome Randi Weingarten and her insistence that the only way to defeat COVID was to sacrifice the future of the young. Even the film’s final moments of self-destruction reflected the attitude that many had in 2020, that the situation was hopeless and that there was no escape beyond waiting for the world to end. The final image of one man, driven mad and screaming, brings to mind both the fate of the typical Lovecraftian explorer and also the excesses of the COVID era. That Stephen King continues to be one of the major defenders of these excesses brings a wonderful irony to the film’s subtext.

The Mist has definitely grown on me. It still has its flaws but those flaws are less of a problem now than they were in 2007. In 2007, The Mist seemed overlong. In 2026, that 2-hour running time feels like a relief from the slow-moving miniseries that have become a signature part of the streaming age. Even Thomas Jane’s performance, which seemed rather stiff when I first saw the movie, has improved in hindsight. His tight-jawed stoicism makes his eventual breakdown all the more effective. Everyone reaches the limit, the film seems to be saying.

The Mist is a film that has aged well. It’s one of the better Stephen King adaptations, one that largely stays true to the source material while still having the courage to develop its own identity. The first time I saw it, I was wrong about The Mist. It’s a film that deserves to be remembered as one of the most relevant horror films of the past 20 years.

On Wednesday evening, Jeff and I went down to the dollar theater and we finally got around to seeing A Dolphin Tale. A Dolphin Tale is one of those movies that I was really enthusiastic about seeing when it first opened in theaters but then, for whatever reason, I just never got around to seeing it. So, I was happy to have a chance to catch it before it left theaters for a sure-to-be popular life as a video rental. The film’s trailer led me to suspect that I would cry and cry while watching A Dolphin Tale and I was not disappointed.

This is going to be a pretty simple review because A Dolphin Tale is a pretty simple movie and that’s exactly why it’s a good movie. The movie tells the true story of Winter, a dolphin who was horribly injured by a crab trap and who lost her tail as a result. After almost dying, Winter manages to fight back and is soon able to swim again. However, swimming with no tail is damaging her spine and, unless something can be done, Winter will eventually end up killing herself. Luckily for Winter, there’s a dedicated and eccentric scientist (played by Morgan Freeman, who can make any line sound like an edict from God) who dedicates himself to building her a prosthetic tail. Will Freeman be able to get the tail built before Winter has to be put down and, more importantly, will Winter be able to learn how to use the new tail before her new home, the Clearwater Marine Hospital, runs out of money and is sold off to a businessman who wants to turn the place into a hotel?

If you don’t already know the answer then you’ve never seen a movie before. Yes, A Dolphin’s Tale is predictable and yes, it’s not very subtle about manipulating the audience’s emotions but I don’t care. The movie is just so sincere and the film’s story is just so inspiring that I had no problem allowing myself to be manipulated. This is a movie that has a good heart and it’s obvious that for director Smith and for most of the cast (which includes Ashley Judd, Harry Connick, Jr., and Nathan Gamble, along with Freeman) that this film really was a labor of love. The true star of the film, however, is Winter, who plays herself in this film.

The film itself is in 3-D and yes, there’s about a hundred shots of Winter swimming straight at the camera that were obviously included just because the film was in 3-D but who cares? Yes, it’s manipulative but it works. At the film’s end, we see documentary footage of Winter actually being rescued and cared for by the real people who we’ve just seen recreated in the film. Not a single one of them looks as good as Harry Connick, Jr. or quite as wise as Morgan Freeman but they all look like heroes to me.

Seriously, if this film doesn’t touch you then you have no heart and you are quite possibly a member of the walking dead.