🟨 The Mist (1980) Review - Stephen King Murders My Childhood Dreams | Book Waffle
.jpg)
The Mist (1980) written by Stephen King
I still remember growing up and seeing The Mist (2007) commercials on TV. I was big on monster hunting and conspiracy shows around that time. Things like In Search Of... and MonsterQuest were my favorites!So you can imagine my surprise when I picked this up, this arms-length hallmark of my childhood, and thought, "Wow. This kinda sucks."
The Mist follows protagonist daddy David as he does a milk run to the local grocery store. Not to be pigeonholed, David takes the extraordinary step of bringing his son, Billy, along with him. While David is in the dairy aisle debating the merits of skim vs 2% for his morning brew, a blanket mist rolls over the supermarket. Soon strange creatures begin emerging from the mist, and any shoppers that attempt to leave never return.
The Mist is my second King story, and while I could bear his writing style in Thinner, this was too much. It's so wordy. ~50k words but it could've easily been 30-40k. Knowingly, the book description has the gall to call this a "novella". Novella my ass.
The protagonist's narration didn't do anything for me. There's far too much clumsy figurative language. The voice is dull, and subtlety is nonexistent.
The characters are gimmicky and insufferable. The sheer amount of times someone says a variation of "I'm scared" or inexplicably feels uneasy irked me. And then we have the numerous times where a character asks the protagonist stupid questions that have no answer.
Is Mommy all right [even though you've been with me the whole time and wouldn't know]?
What is that mist [even though everyone here clearly does not know wtf it is]?
Are we going to be okay [despite us being in the same unknowing situation]?
It's one thing to throw those in to add a layer of insecurity to a character, but that's not what's being done here. At least, I don't think. Then again, everyone in this cast is varying degrees of useless, so maybe it is intentional.
There's this cartoonishly crazy spiritual woman that everyone flocks to for some unfathomable reason. Has the most hair-brained schemes on how to solve their situation.
The characters are gimmicky and insufferable. The sheer amount of times someone says a variation of "I'm scared" or inexplicably feels uneasy irked me. And then we have the numerous times where a character asks the protagonist stupid questions that have no answer.
Is Mommy all right [even though you've been with me the whole time and wouldn't know]?
What is that mist [even though everyone here clearly does not know wtf it is]?
Are we going to be okay [despite us being in the same unknowing situation]?
It's one thing to throw those in to add a layer of insecurity to a character, but that's not what's being done here. At least, I don't think. Then again, everyone in this cast is varying degrees of useless, so maybe it is intentional.
There's this cartoonishly crazy spiritual woman that everyone flocks to for some unfathomable reason. Has the most hair-brained schemes on how to solve their situation.
Stephen. My man. If you are going to do one of your clumsy religious analogies in your very serious and very spoopy book, you need to make it believable.
Sorry, but if I was with Richard Simmons in this situation and he claimed that strapping on a crimson leotard and twerking atop the check-out counter would make the demon fog go away, I don't think I would believe him no matter how many people had died.
Maybe that's just me.
And the contrived romance! What the fuck was that? Dude. David. You're a husband. You're with your kid. Haven't seen your wife in all of 24 hours and you're already starting to eye up some other woman?
Why did that need to happen? No, seriously. Why did that need to happen?
It's not because David needs someone within the story to worry about. He has his son for that. It's not because David needed characterization as evil. He's heroic and good for the rest of the book.
No joke, I think it's in there just because King was horny and/or wanted to appeal to that audience. Which... Okay...?
Also, and I know it's not the book's fault, but the 2017 Simon & Schuster audiobook has the strangest narrator. The default voice is this bizarre mix of husky macho man and slick Italian mobster. The character voices are equally weird.
Ignoring the awful cast of characters, the setting is phenomenal. The mist is proper weird fic SCP horror land and I love it. The scenes where the people come face-to-face with the monsters lurking in the mist are fantastic. And since you are dealing with the unknown, you never know what the hell King is going to have pop out to nibble on some human pancreas. Juxtaposing that constant tension with a run-of-the-mill supermarket was a genius move. Gotta give the man credit where it's due.
Ignoring the awful cast of characters, the setting is phenomenal. The mist is proper weird fic SCP horror land and I love it. The scenes where the people come face-to-face with the monsters lurking in the mist are fantastic. And since you are dealing with the unknown, you never know what the hell King is going to have pop out to nibble on some human pancreas. Juxtaposing that constant tension with a run-of-the-mill supermarket was a genius move. Gotta give the man credit where it's due.
It's just a shame that it breaks its back trying to drag the rest of the story over the finish line. Because, as it stands, I don't think I would ever read this book again despite how much I love the idea of it.
Comments
Post a Comment