Analyzing the power of fear both internally and externally in unreleased film The Mist, director Frank Darabount (The Shawshank Redemption) and stars Thomas Jane (The Punisher), Marcia Gay Harden (Into the Wild) and Chris Owen (American Pie) spoke about interpreting and expanding on yet another Stephen King adaptation.
"In all fairness, I think I have a particular love for the man's work," said Darabount, referring to the director's relationship with King, or, more directly, the writer's work. This will be Darabount's third film adaptation of a King story, the first two being award winners Shawshank and The Green Mile.
"(King) is guiding readers through the world that he writes. It's something I relate not just as a reader but as a filmmaker myself."
This time around, the subject matter is considerably less epic. Taking place in a small town in Maine, the plot revolves around a mysterious mist that consumes the town, trapping its inhabitants in a grocery store.
Unlike the thousand-page opus that was The Green Mile novel, The Mist is a novella just over 100 pages, allowing Darabount and company to explore methods of deepening the characters rather than feeling forced to squeeze all of King's characterization into a feature film.
"It was an opportunity to expand on these characters," Darabount said, as opposed to working "not to harm characters in terms of slimming it down."
Darabount declared proudly that The Mist is the first film under his direction that is less than two hours long. However, in this short time period, both the physical horrors of the inhuman antagonists and the psychological trials of the human antagonists had to be illustrated through the characters and plot.
Harden had a particularly challenging task with her character, a religious freak who, through her fear of the unknown, attempts to sacrifice people to please God as the situation grows more dire.
Although Harden's character was more externally evil in the novella, the actress and director attempted to create a similar kind of evil through emphasized subtlety.
"We created a person who is less visually obvious and tried to create someone who more blended into the crowd," said Harden. "She creates a mob mentality."
"I bought The Idiot's Guide to 'Revelations,'" Harden said, articulating on her preparation for the character.
"(My character) is ultimately destructive with her fear. Her fear was the thing that drove her to her insanity," said Harden.
It is this character analysis that the filmmakers hope will raise The Mist above the run-of-the-mill horror franchise films, such as 30 Days of Night or Hostel, spouting "a very Lord of the Flies feel," according to Harden.
"(The film) is more about the monsters these people become," said Chris Owen, the young up-and-comer whose small amount of fame comes from his turn of "The Sherminator" in the American Pie franchise.
"It's been the thing for me to try and do all of the genres," said Owen, commenting on this drastic change in roles for an actor whose bread and butter has come from playing college-aged goofballs.
"When I got to read over what my poor character gets to endure, this is so far from anything I'd done before," Owen said.
Jane is also making quite the career turn, focusing most of his words on his directorial debut Dark Country, which he is currently shooting.
"(The movie is about) a couple driving through the desert at night, and they pick up an accident victim on the road, and then it all goes down hill from there," Jane said. He added, "It's very much in the vein of Hitchcock, you know, the old great and film noirs from the 40s and 50s. That's heavy influence on this film."
As for Darabount, when asked about his recent promotion from screenwriter to ambitious writer/director, he had only one thing to say:
"I feel like I have a lot more movies to make."
The Mist is scheduled for release on Nov. 21.
Photo: Courtesy of SUNY
