Bad theology in the grocer’s as monsters roam the car park
Stephen Brown is scared twice over
ANTHONY DE MELLO SJ suggested bad religion puts its faith in medals to ward off our ghosts; good religion gets us to see that ghosts don’t exist. There is certainly plenty of bad religion in The Mist (Cert. 15), mainly generated by Mrs Carmody (in a scenery-chewing performance from Marcia Gay Harden), a religious fanatic.
She interprets being besieged in a New England grocery store while monsters hungrily roam the car park as payback time from an unforgiving God. Those without the right kind of religious “medals” are blasphemers doomed to become sacrificial victims to these avenging angels. The enveloping mist embracing the town contains not ghosts, but deadly creatures.
The film hints that both fog and monsters are the outcome of scientific experiments at the nearby military base. It’s a sideswipe at our insatiable appetite for interfering with nature. Carmody cites, among other things, embryo research as the reason for God’s devastating judgement on us. Whatever the merits of her analysis, it is the solutions she offers that will scare many viewers as much as the monsters.
In this his latest film, the director Frank Darabont continues his quest to set people free from believing in medals. Witness The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile (also Stephen King stories), where fear is at the root of abominable behaviour by some, while others discover a glorious liberty through trusting higher things.
This is Darabont’s first horror picture. It could convince some viewers that all religion is dangerous, but most will see Mrs Carmody as a fearful warning to post-9/11 America. Neither entrenchment nor aggression assists the characters in the film any more than they do in real life.
Michael Ramsey’s take on good religion was that the New Testament is like a good bishop. God doesn’t send someone else: he goes in person. That is what we see in the character of Thomas (David Drayton). He and his young son, just as trapped as Carmody and her followers, choose to focus on whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. It’s their sacrificial courage, along with others’, which redeems the situation.
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