Midweek Mention... The Mist

The Mist

Dan: I Can't see you over there. Must be the mis.

Cris: Yeah, it must be the mist though.

Dan: Foggy in here. Is it fog or is it the mist?

Reegs: It's the week, isn't it? Yeah, the week.

Dan: Ah,

Sidey: articles.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: The, the,

Reegs: Scraping the barrel of content when you are theming a week around a very specific bit of grammar.

Sidey: Yeah,

I liked it though. Yeah. So we did a, a movie called The Mist.

Reegs: The Mist We did, yeah. Frank Daron doing a kind of a Stephen King adaptation and Frank Deon's done a few Stephen King. King

Sidey: completed the trilogy?

Reegs: Yeah, I think so.

Dan: A trilogy.

Sidey: what the other sho Shank Green Mile. And this.

Yeah.

Reegs: So same director, writer, combination.

And starring a bunch of people that would go on to Star. Star in the Walking Dead

Sidey: Certainly Dale and Carol, yeah. Are in this[00:01:00]

Reegs: and the bird with blonde hair. You

Dan: He got the guy

Sidey: yes, I remember her. Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: So a few

Sidey: people, lots of people. Toby Jones is in this

Yeah. And William Sadler as well.

Yeah. Nadler. I didn't recognize the actual main like protagonist in this dude. I

Reegs: Thomas Jane,

Sidey: I didn't recommend recognize him from anything

Reegs: You might recognize him from the Punisher he was in. Oh,

Sidey: Oh, okay.

Reegs: One of the Punisher movies at least. He's been in a few things. My mind's gone completely blank on what they were, but yeah, I've always thought I quite liked him

Dan: Nelly came through a few times and I'd pause it. And it had him on screen and she goes, oh, John McLean.

I goes, no, it's not John McLean. But yeah, it's that hairline,

Reegs: yeah,

Sidey: Yeah, she's Mr. Mark there.

Reegs: This one opens with an artist doing some very Drew strand's type pictures. He's actually even got one of Drew Strand's images on the wall, the thing and he's doing the dark tower and stuff. It's an artist.

It's Thomas Jane. He's painting, and then there's like a crash of lightning and a tree comes through the [00:02:00]

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: And as is often in Stephen King's stories, he's living in, maine, new

Dan: Yeah. Um,

Picturesque. Yeah. Little kind of cabin by the

Reegs: Lake. Yeah.

Dan: And it was his grandfather's tree.

As they learn in the morning, it's, it's smashed in the side of the house. It's left a massive open hole, and his young son is excited and jumping around to look at the other damage that the storm had done, including taking out the boathouse.

Reegs: Yeah. And the car of next door neighbor, Andre Brower. You were saying from Brooklyn nine

Dan: What did he play in that? He was Captain Holt. Holt. Yeah. He just passed away recently, I believe. Yeah. I really liked him though. He was fantastic

Reegs: Brooklyn.

He was a funny character and really well played. This is a bit different. He CA, he's been involved in a property dispute with this guy, so there's a bit of underlying tension.

And to sort of settle it, he's, Thomas Jane has promised his wife, he's gonna go to the store to go and [00:03:00] fix things up, fix the window, and he takes Brent with him and his son. And they head off down to the store to go and do some patching up. And as they go off, I think you see some kind of weird mist rolling in across the lake and they're like, that's a bit odd,

Dan: Yeah, it's he's kind of painted out as a. As a go-getter, like, oh, well, shit happens. I best go and do it. I mean, he could have been really upset, but he just looking at.

fixing

the place up quick as he can. Let's get it sorted. Nothing we can do. All his artwork's been destroyed as well. And he, he talks about, you know, AI or something, being able to pump that out in 10 seconds, whereas he takes months obviously, to do all his artwork and he's gonna ask for an extension, but he wasn't sure.

So all this is going through his head and he heads down to the store and Captain Holt. Hooks a lift with him as well. So it's him, his son, and Captain Holt all going to the general hardware store. Yeah. Which is where Toby Jones

Reegs: It

1. Toby Jones [00:04:00] works there. Yeah. I saw him most recently in that post office scandal.

Dan: Was

Reegs: Yeah.

Which was great. And he was great in it. yeah, so it's not long actually when they're at the store before things start going really weird, right? They start hearing police sirens and then a guy, Jeffrey Deman runs in, starts babbling about things that have happened out there, and an air raid siren goes off.

It's all pretty

Dan: military police buzzing on the, on the road in front of them. And your man that runs in Jeremy, did you say his name was

Reegs: Jeffrey Damon is the actor in this. He is Dan.

Dan: Dan. So Dan rolls in, he's got blood on his shirt, and he's talking about how something in the mist just snatched his body.

And he didn't see much of it. He didn't see much of it, but don't go out

Sidey: He said, yeah, he is adamant that you cannot go out there. It's not safe. And then we need to figure out what's going on before anyone

Reegs: Goes out there, but one woman immediately has to go out there. She starts kind of [00:05:00] crying.

She's tearing up as people are afraid and standing around. She's like, well, I left my, I thought

Sidey: yeah, it's two minute

Reegs: two minute, two minute trip. My 8-year-old daughter is at home alone, so she just has to go. And you're like, well, she's dead straight away. Like, So, she

Dan: seen anything come out the mist

Sidey: this. No. It's a lot of looking out windows and not being sure exactly if this guy's on the level.

Reegs: but you cannot see more than maybe two, three feet

Sidey: is

Dan: The mist has enveloped the entire car park and

Sidey: you've also got the guy that fucked Stiffler mum from the First American

Reegs: the

she,

Sidey: agent. Yeah. He's the first one that goes,

Reegs: Chris Owen.

So there's a generator out and they, a band of them go downstairs and they're, they're like, oh, there's a little generator outside. We'll just go and start it. And Dan's going, no, don't do it. There's something out there. And everybody's a bit circumspect, but the bag boy, Sherman may be trying to prove something to himself.

Starts to go out there and then he's immediately just taken by these huge tentacles, just kind of drag him under the door and they start coming into the room. I [00:06:00] think Thomas Jane hacks one off with

Sidey: it's, it's tentacle, but it's also kind of got teeth. 'cause it rips him some of his skin off his chest. Yeah. And it is clearly not gonna let go. And eventually he's kind of holding onto the like, like a garage door. Yeah. Which he's holding onto that for dear life and they can't get him off.

And they do hack one tentacle off. But he's taken and he is screaming as he is dragged along the

Dan: It's like a huge Venus fly trap, isn't it? And if anybody, the fog is like, Jersey Airport on a bad day, isn't it?

Sidey: Yeah. No one's getting in

Dan: nobody's getting in or out. You can't see your hand in front of your face.

Sidey: but they go back then, 'cause they're in the kind of storage room delivery area, they go back into the store and try and sort of explain this madness to the people who haven't seen it and they're like.

Yeah. Nice one. Dickhead, you know, but not buying it,

Reegs: But they, they immediately get very serious right though, because they start barricading things and everyone else, it's like a good study in what happens when people are panicky or afraid.

Dan: Well, this is it. It's lord, than a fly stuff, isn't it? Yeah. But we've, we've seen some, some guys who were. [00:07:00] Obviously not believing there was anything out there and just saying, oh, go for it. And that's why this kid has died because he's opened the doors up

Sidey: calls 'em pussies and

Dan: it. And yeah, there was a little bit of

Sidey: so the guys that work in the store don't buy it. There's also a lady in there who's like a religious

Reegs: financial, Mrs. Dy

Sidey: Comedy Master Gay Harden.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: So she's got her take on it.

Yeah.

Reegs: She's, yeah. She sees this

Sidey: no one believes them. No one believes then that this guy's got, but they do have this one tentacle bit left on the floor for a time. Yeah. So they are able to show some extra people before it kind of dissolves into nothing. And so,

Dan: They,

Reegs: there is a few others.

William Sadler sees it, I think, but Brent, his neighbor doesn't, he's begging, he's imploring his neighbor, go and see it, but he thinks that it, it gets tied into some political thing. He's running for some local

Sidey: he's, well, there's also, there's the people who are local to the town. He's not. Yeah. And so he's, and then he, he, he sort of says, well, later on he says, I've [00:08:00] been speaking to my people.

And people are like, what do you mean your people? 'cause he is black. Yeah. And so there's that element to it. And everything sort of breaks down,

Reegs: and the group fractures a bit. And one of them is like, nah, we're going off out into the miss.

We're gonna go and find our way. So, Thomas Jane's character, David, I think it is, says to him well look, okay, look. Will you at least put a rope around your waist and take it with you so you can see how far you get. So they do go off and the ropes go and then suddenly it's that old thing of like, it going really, really fast.

His hands burning, then try to, and then they pull back at when it gets to about 200 meters and when the thing that they pull back is just a pair of legs, just like attached to, to the rope. So, which obviously kicks off complete and utter, like just

Sidey: Yeah. Then, then all they can see out when they look out is just this like pair of legs and some entrails just on the floor.

Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. And it's there's just a single pane glass at the front of the store, which they've barricaded up with bags and, and things. And when night comes, you [00:09:00] see the first of these huge hornet type. Creatures that go onto the door and they, they seem to be attracted by the light, but they still want light in there for some reason.

Sidey: Well, they don't, they just can't get the message out, do they? 'cause William Sadler and his, what he seems to be some sort of, he works in the garage or he is some sort of engineer, and he, his jury rigged some, some lights to some car batteries.

And they, they realize that they've got not, not much juice. So they, they just for emergencies. And Toby Jones says like, and I would've thought, you know, moths, insects, they're attracted, right? They are a

Reegs: I know. Yeah.

Sidey: So he says they're attracted to the light, but they can't get that message out to the other people.

'cause they're going around tearing them on while he's saying, turn 'em off. And so eventually, 'cause these things are fucking enormous. They keep banging into glass till it breaks. Yeah. And then the big fuckers come through. Yeah. And you get a real good sequence of

Reegs: A woman gets sta like stung in the neck and it almost immediately swells up really horribly. And then in fighting them a guy, like they've got these buckets full of

Sidey: like, it's mops that Yeah.

they

just can't get

'em fire to [00:10:00] him and he just like swings it round and then just completely burns his

he knocks the mop over the bucket over and you are like, oh, you idiot. But it's, there's some bits of it that are a little bit like.

You know who shot Mr. Burns, where the people who are happy, you know, they're the ones that are gonna go. So the, the couple, the girl and the, the, the Army guy have just realized that they've been in love for ages and they care. So you're like, well, one of you, at least one of you's

Reegs: At least one.

Dan: Well that's

Reegs: As it happens, it's both of them in really horrible

Sidey: Well, there, that's right. 'cause there are three Army guys in there.

Dan: And a little bit later on in the plot, we learned that the army have had something to do with

Sidey: this. Yeah. They have to go to a pharmacy, don't

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: Well for the Burns guy.

The Burns guy. Yeah.

Dan: For the Burns guy, and they, they find other victims in there, including loads of spiders that have

Reegs: oh my God, that guy. He's like,

Sidey: it is like the aliens nest,

Reegs: yeah. He's like, been like, sort of sucked up in the ceiling and he's being hung there by these webs, and he's going like, I don't feel good or something.

And then his body just erupts

Sidey: he says, I'm, he says, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's all [00:11:00] our

Reegs: He says about

Sidey: our fault. Yeah. And then he just, yeah. All these spiders just burst out of him. You see his, his shirt comes apart and he's got all these like

Reegs: oh

Sidey: and, then it's like. Bank spiders everywhere.

And then the biggest spiders start coming out and you're like, woo.

Dan: and I think one or two of that, that crowd that have braved it into the pharmacy to get medicine for the burns victim have suffered as well.

Sidey: Well, there's like acid webs, aren't they? And I think one guy gets sort of degloved on his leg

Reegs: Yeah. It's horrible.

Sidey: acid web goes round his leg and just takes the fucking skin off.

Dan: It's, it's all, it's all gruesome.

Reegs: Meanwhile, back at the the, the, the. Convenience store, Mrs. Carmody.

Before that, she's had a moment where when the hideous Beasties came in, one seemed to kind of ignore her, and she's used that as like a symbol or like a sign that God is

Sidey: God's vessel.

Yeah.

Reegs: her. So she's like now corralled a load of power, especially while they've been away and they've come back and she's leading like essentially a cult there.

So when they make it back they've, they've had [00:12:00] this thing from the military police guy. He said, oh, you know, we were involved the Arrowhead Project. They've been talking about that. They go back and the two other military guys have hung themselves in the or hanged themselves.

Dan: They, they. Through guilt, I guess, and through response, feeling the responsibility

Sidey: the one, the one guy that's left and it guy, he's like, oh, they talked about it and I couldn't get him to stop.

And then they, they sort of, he just blur admits it that yes, it was them. They have, well, the scientific wing of the military, whatever the experiments they're doing have opened some window to a

Dan: a portal to another world. And that's where all these horrible monsters are, are coming in from. And Mrs.

Curmudgeon or whatever comedy she's now built up a bit of a, a following.

There's like half of them. And they called this, they said, look. In another day because she says at one point the sacrificed this guy, so they sacrificed the military guy and they say, the beast will leave us alone tonight. And sure enough, [00:13:00] it

Reegs: That's when you get to fi, you see one of it, it's gotta be 80 or 90 feet tall.

It's kind of like a lobster crab thing. It's just like snips him in half. Horrible.

Dan: And, and then so. He's our main character guy. What's his name?

David, David. Yeah. He's worried about his son saying, look, he's gonna be next. They're gonna sacrifice him and we're gonna keep getting sacrificed until,

Sidey: well, they just fall asleep, don't they?

They're so exhausted. He, he, he comes to and he is like, right, and it seems quiet and they're like, right, well, we can sort of try and get out now.

Reegs: Yeah. Well, when he gets up as well. Right. Joe? The guy that they went, they sacrificed loads of shit to go and get the antibiotics for. He's died overnight and Carol, from the Walking Dead has committed suicide just by having pills.

Like she's just topped herself. She's had enough, like it's fucking

Sidey: Fest, this movie. And then so they, they sort of sneak towards exit, but Mrs. Dy is

Dan: she's waiting there.

Sidey: there with a knife, they get surrounded. Then by everyone else, they'd all [00:14:00] tooled up with knives and she demands the boy.

She's like, we

Reegs: his son.

Yeah.

Dan: right.

Sidey: Get the boy we want him. And then take the horse, he says about the the lady

Dan: about Yeah. And who's, who's been nothing but nice to her and trying to say, are you okay?

Reegs: She has immediately become the boy's mother and basically his surrogate wife as well in the plot, which is quite

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

but there is one gun that she had and it turns out Toby Jones is a cracked shot.

94

Sidey: he was the yeah, he was, he was a dead eye.

Dan: So he's already taken down a couple of the beasts with some good shots, but they've

Reegs: and like crucially, they keep mentioning how many bullets they've got left. Right. How many times, three times they may be mentioned, or how many bullets we've

Dan: in a brilliant move to make their escape, he shoots dead.

Mrs. Curmudgeon. Yeah. And

Sidey: nice Christ pose on

Dan: Yeah. And, and she goes, and that, that allows them time to run through the, the death car

Reegs: It's quite funny because he says to David does, he's like, he's a [00:15:00] bit worried that everybody's gonna be like, well, you've just murdered this woman.

He's be like, nah, go on. You know? I can't remember the exact exchange, but that is the flavor

Dan: He

Sidey: He said there was no other choice. He said it's just had to killer her.

And then that's why I thanked you. They get to the car, it's a Toyota Land Rouge, it's a bit obvious. Cool looking, and they get to the car. And Toby Jones smiles and you're like, no, what are you doing? And he's fucking killed.

Reegs: Sure.

Well, I was thinking why is a car such like a magical portal that the, it was,

Sidey: well, to them it would be, I suppose it's

Reegs: in the mist or something. I

know,

Dan: Well, they wanted to drive through the mist, didn't they? They say, let's just get to state

Sidey: better. Better than being on foot, I'd say. Yeah.

Dan: And

they do. There's, there's five of them that

Sidey: but Toby Jones' character, he is killed, but he drops the gun on the bonnet. Yeah. 'cause this is super important.

Reegs: It is super important. Yeah.

Sidey: And David is reaching for it. It's a bit like the holy grail at the end of last crusade where, and the, the lady saying, just leave it with, you know, we're in the car. Let's just fucking get over. He does eventually reach it though, unlike Indiana. He has it and they drive off until

Reegs: wife's house, to his home first, and his wife [00:16:00] has been strung up on the doorway. They see

Dan: she's been webbed,

Reegs: webbed

Sidey: Which is convenient 'cause he is moved on anyway.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. He's got his new family in the car.

Dan: and his his son is being cradled by his new wife.

Exactly.

Sidey: And they just drive

Reegs: in the back. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes.

literally is because it's

Sidey: nuclear family. Yeah.

Dan: yeah, till they've got no fuel.

They, they drive to, they've got no

Sidey: But we see fucking

enormous. There's one. There's one that's bigger, like, I don't know, a hundred times bigger than Godzilla.

Reegs: It's just ridiculous looking at it, flying around. It's

Sidey: that scientifically though, that bone mass couldn't be sustained. Anyway, it was

Reegs: Yeah, I think it couldn't

Dan: a huge stick insect. It was like a praying

Sidey: it's just making a huge kind of elephant kind of noise, and they're just looking at it going,

Reegs: it's like everything's lost.

Like there's just disgusting things ripping you

Dan: And the, the fog is absolutely thick and they, they roll out and the mist is just as thick. so they're in the car then and just

Sidey: glances at the gunney

Dan: the, to the noises.

Reegs: Well, and his boy, he promises, he says, dad, don't let [00:17:00] the monsters get me. And he promises him that he won't let the monsters get

Sidey: he looks at the gun and he turns around, he looks at Dan the, the sort of the now grandfather, and he just nods.

And then he counts the bullets and she says, well, we've only got four. And he says, well, I'll figure it out.

Dan: figure

Reegs: figure it out, is what he

says.

Sidey: he says. And I turned it off at this point because I didn't want the messages to see this bit. And,

Reegs: and

then it cuts to the exterior shot of the car in the mist and you just hear four gunshots as he kills everybody in the car, including his son. Yeah, Chris is wide eyed. Like,

Dan: didn't see this shit coming.

Cris: that actually what happens?

Reegs: Yeah. And then he gets out. Wait, Chris just, and then he gets out, he gets bare, he gets out the car and he howls with anguish.

He

Dan: Come and take me, come on,

Reegs: He fires the gun multiple times, blankly in his mouth like,

Sidey: know, they're outta bullets

Reegs: And then he's just screaming. He wants something to kill him, you know, to end it or

Dan: What, what's gonna happen,

Reegs: you hear something coming towards him and it's gonna finish him off. And then it's not, it's a tank.

It's,

Sidey: the US military. The US

Reegs: [00:18:00] US military

Sidey: flame fo is save the day. And if he just massive

Dan: fans

Sidey: he just

Dan: away the mist

Sidey: if he just waited two minutes, his family would've been fine.

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: so he's just there howling on the floor, despair like, oh fuck,

Dan: A real, a,

Reegs: and the mist is starting to clear and the military come through and they're burning these things and

Sidey: at the end, no, the end. Yeah.

Reegs: it's one of cinema's great, great

Dan: Oh, it's a real, it's a real kick in the teeth, isn't it? Because you, part of me thinks Friday Night Lights is just like such a bad ending. But it isn't. It's, it's totally different. It is a Stephen King thing. It's just makes you feel.

Oh,

I like that

he didn't

Reegs: write this ending. He prefers this ending, but he didn't write it.

Yeah.

Dan: Oh, right. What was his ending?

Reegs: Oh, I don't know. I have read it though, I think a long

Cris: was a happy ending.

Dan: It was a happy ending.

Reegs: Oh

yeah. No, actually I've got it in my notes here. The, the original left it on a much more ambiguous note. The survivors facing an uncertain fate with the whole [00:19:00] world apparently overrun.

So basically the bit before he killed everybody.

Sidey: Right, Yeah. So that's fairly miserable, but it is interesting. Obviously the ending's like a massive talking point 'cause it's so fucking bleak. Yeah. But just how everything, how obviously that's like society in this shop Yeah.

And how it all breaks down when everything goes to shit

Reegs: and how people can be motivated by fear to do weird things, follow weird people, all that sort of stuff.

And it felt, feels really relevant like now, especially.

Dan: Well, how, how kind of societal norms fell apart

Reegs: really quickly?

Dan: Yeah. You know, just a, a, a couple of days and it was Lord of the Ring stuff, really? Not Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Flies. And it was. Really entertaining actually. I, I, I really enjoyed this and it's, it's a, it is one of those horror films that's a 15 rather

Sidey: Yeah, it's not super scary and I would say, although I only looked at the budget for it, it is not, this isn't like Tubman ney, but it did

occasionally have a look of like a sci-fi channel [00:20:00] movie.

Yeah. But that didn't bother me. I thought it

Dan: at all. No. There was enough interest with the actors who have gone on to other things that I recognized from those other things that made me think

Sidey: of other things.

Dan: Of

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. I really, really like this,

Cris: Yeah, I've not watched it, but it sounds like I'll

Reegs: you looked horrified as we were describing the

Sidey: ending, which is the appropriate

Cris: It's not only the ending, it's I have to say with I, I'm talking despite not watching this film, I've heard this kind of storyline with. Over 80% of the horror movies where

Reegs: it's a very typical kind

Cris: of, that's kind of how

Reegs: monsters are the bad guys, but really it's humans type

Cris: and, and it,

Sidey: like the Walking Dead,

Reegs: But that, that is a, you know,

Cris: it's a, is a, it's an occurring, but, but it's, it's also pretty much all the comedies or all the romantic comedies or they all kind of follow the, the, the action, the revenge action story.

And they all kind of follow the same storyline where. We're all in this cabin in the woods, or we're in the stranger [00:21:00] Land, or there's this family that's sha each location and we're, we're in this place. We end up here. The hot chick sometimes survives, or she's the first one to get killed or, or, you know, it's a common storyline.

But if,

Reegs: Basically every movie is like that though,

Sidey: Chris, but they,

Cris: No, no. I know that's something, but

Reegs: you can't describe in those very

Sidey: but they do subvert it by having a fucking twisted

Reegs: That's it. Yeah. It's the ending. It's the fact that it makes really good use of, its very limited location. And you know, the act. And the writing and stuff, that's what sets it apart because like you say, there is a lot of stuff that this is very similar to, even the title is generic as fuck. The fact that there is a, a James Carpenter book I think called The Fog, which I've also read.

And so like,

Sidey: the Clouds. the Cumulus. Nimbus,

Reegs: Yeah. The rain, I dunno, probably the drizzle.

Sidey: But this to me, strong, strong recommend.

Cris: Yes, definitely.

Reegs: Yeah. It's rare that you get people getting really angry because the ending is just too fucking bleak and fucked up. But that's what this movie did,

Sidey: so,

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan: Strong