The Quick and Dirties: 31 Days of Horror 2018 Grand Finale!

White Bird in a Blizzard

The Mist

Directed by Frank Darabont.
2007. Rated R, 125 minutes.
Cast:
Thomas Jane
Marcia Gay Harden
Laurie Holden
Andre Braugher

A thick, ominous mist rolls into a small-town carrying with it some strange and vicious creatures. We, the viewers, get to hang out with some of the local yokels who are trapped in the supermarket. Based on a Stephen King novella.

It’s well-written horror as it pertains to the humans. When the cast inevitably starts dying off it is with believable, though not always good, reasoning they venture out into the forbidding mist. The opposition between religious resignation to one’s fate and survivalist pragmatism is well done. As the suddenly crowned prophetess, Marcia Gay Harden does a fabulous job in a thankless role. It’s thankless because the movie itself is definitely not on her character’s side. Finally, even though I correctly predicted the ending well before it happened it still manages to work.

It’s poorly written crap with regards to the mist and its inhabitants. In Cloverfield it was okay to not find out anything about the giant creature destroying Manhattan because no one in the movie knew anything to tell. Here, there are clearly people who know what caused the problem. Before they can tell us anything we get the long ago played out tactic of them inexplicably dying or being found dead just as they were either about to tell us what’s going on or when it becomes apparent they know what’s going on. These people are military personnel and in fairness to them, and maybe an indictment of the screenwriters, it’s hardly likely that soldiers of their rank (mostly privates) would really know anything anyway. The creatures themselves are numerous. The smaller ones are fine and do some dastardly things. The larger ones do as well but they’re poorly rendered. They either move mechanically or are made up of easy to spot cartoonish looking CGI. The latter is true for the first monster we “see”. It appears to be a giant land-walking octopus but all we see are its enormous but very fake tentacles causing all sorts of mayhem. This happens very early in the movie but we never again hear a peep out of this particular menace. None of these monsters seem to have any rhyme or reason for their actions and are all powerful and deadly. Our heroes are trapped in a store that we’re explicitly told has a front made up of 100% plate glass. Yet somehow, this movie runs longer than two hours and covers several days. Um…yeah.

This is a frustrating movie to watch. During all the human to human tension-building scenes, the writing is exceptional for horror movies. However, when the focus is on the things that make it a horror movie we get nothing even remotely original and our big bad monsters look like crap. On top of that, if these monsters were as bad as they’re supposed to be then these people have been allowed to live for far too long. If you’re a horror fan or a Stephen King fan give it a shot and you might like it more than I. If creature-features aren’t your thing, skip it and rest easy with the knowledge you’re only missing okayness, not greatness.

MY SCORE: 5/10

Dark Country

Directed by Thomas Jane.
2009. Rated R, 88 minutes.
Cast:
Thomas Jane
Lauren German
Chris Browning
Ron Perlman

It starts with a dame (German). At least that’s what our hero (Jane) tells us. You know, Double Indemnity, Body Heat, The Maltese Falcon and even Spiderman all started because of a dame. Those first three movies are classics, Spiderman, not so much but I like it well enough. Sorry, I got distracted.

Anyhoo, our hero met this particular dame in Vegas and married her after a night of drunken passion. Once, back in my younger days I was willing to get married after a night of drunken flirting. No, there was no actual passion. Anyone who’s ever seen me in person knows I stand about as tall as most middle-schoolers. She was an Amazonian 6’4” college volleyball player who must’ve had a fetish for short guys because she showed interest in me, believe it or not. She had a gorgeous face and curves…wait, I can’t tell that story. My wife might be reading this. No worries babe, this happened years before I laid eyes on you.

Oh, the movie. The loving couple decides to take a drive through the desert, at night. Along the way they narrowly miss hitting some guy standing in the middle of the road. The whole setup reminds me of a segment from Creepshow 2. Anyone who’s ever seen it will remember “Hey lady, thanks for the ride!” The finale of Dark Country also reminds me of an episode of The Twilight Zone tv series. Both of those have the good sense to only last about 30 minutes long. I had a problem with the mouse to my desktop. It was taking me 30 minutes to do things that should take about five. Right, you don’t care about that.

Why am I so easily distracted during this review? Honestly, DC isn’t really worthy of my attention, or yours for that matter. For most of an hour and a half these two nit-wits drive along a dark road trying to figure out what to do with the guy in the back seat who is apparently dying but is just too stubborn to complete the pass. That hour and a half seems closer to a day and a half.

Visually, it looks like it was made on a computer. I know, lots of movies are made on computers these days. However, this one looks like it was made on your computer. I’m not talking about the brand new, trillion GB, bazillion K memory thing dipped into your life savings for. I’m talking about the one you pawned off on your grandparents are donated to the Salvation Army, the one that doesn’t work with anything created during this century. You’re still not quite sure it’s even Y2K compatible and think it might explode if someone actually tries to turn it on.

I’ve already mentioned that DC makes me think of The Twilight Zone. In fact, it could be an outstanding episode if you trimmed about an hour. As a full-length feature, it’s just too thin and dull. The big “wow” climax tries to save it, but can’t quite rescue it from the ashes. By the way, this is the directorial debut of the movie’s star Thomas Jane. If I were him, I wouldn’t claim it.

MY SCORE: 3/10