From Stephen King's book to Frank Darabont's film, then Christian Torpe's series. Many would tell you that the game of the phone, it does not necessarily give something good in the end. It may be time to listen to them.
We can never say it enough, the label "adapted from a novel by… " does not carry guarantee of quality. The examples follow one another, but the franchises Tom Clancy and Stephen King win this marketing fight hands down, as this label affixed to "their creations" – which have creation only the name of the original authors – only allows to maintain a real fog as to the quality of the adaptation.
"It's the least you can do to try to show someone lost
. in the fog the direction of light. – Vincent Ravalec
Fear The Mist
Everything seems to be going well in the small town of Bridgetown in Maine, the American equivalent of the phantasmagorical town of Puthiers-sur-Marne. When suddenly, a thick fog envelops the city, killing anyone trapped in it. The inhabitants, naturally wishing to survive this somewhat traumatic experience, therefore entrench themselves in the buildings. A man, helped by people met in the abandoned suburbs of the city, will try to find the members of his family, even if it means scattering corpses and secrets on his way.
Fog hides misery
While Stephen King's famous fog contained terrible creatures, escaped from an army experience, Christian Torpe's fog contains the worst fears of our poor trapped American citizens (spiders, Moundir's melon, a film essay by Lars von Trier, a Faudel concert). If the basic premise is promising, the reality is quite different. Of the psychological drama that could have played out before our eyes, where people cornered by the scourge would have entrenched themselves in a kind of primitive animality, there unfortunately remain only stereotyped characters. In the manner of Fear The Walking Dead, we regret that the psychological side is not highlighted enough, while the basic material allowed him to dive into the entrenchments of the mind. The atmosphere of the closed doors, oppressive, suffocating, is unfortunately not transcribed while most of the action takes place in a shopping center transformed into a makeshift safezone (and examples of closed doors are not lacking, from the smallest enclosed space like Buried to the largest, as depicted in Dunkirk).The series also tries, probably in vain, to bring a dose of mysticism. An almost divine, mysterious element, the fog is in its own way an enigma, which can only lead to religious reasoning. Unfortunately, this idea is quickly forgotten by our cronies, who prefer to devote themselves to much more trivial considerations.
A modern series?
As we have said, the characters are stereotyped: we could call them "policeman 1 who dies at the beginning", "policeman 2", "football player 1, 2, 3, 4", "person much too pious", "person much too enigmatic", "amnesiac soldier" or "former detainee". We will note, however, that under these airs of generic characters, some efforts have been put in place to portray some of the difficulties of our time. Thus, the homosexual protagonist must fight against prejudice, while his friend, raped during a party, is ostracized by the community because he is considered to be at fault. And it must be said that it is rather rare to see such themes developed in this type of entertainment and not to feel that they were placed there out of obligation.
