Bell Jar [Review: Under The Dome]

Under The Dome is set in Castle Mill, a small town in Stephen King's Maine that is completely isolated by the appearance of a mysterious invisible forcefield.

The novel is a continuation of themes of isolation and group dynamics from King's previous novels and novellas, particularly The Mist; also, like Albert Camus' The Plague there is a strong element of Nazi allegory (Camus' novel describes the Nazi occuaption of France as a bubonic plague outbreak leading to total quarantine, as well as being a rich and powerful disease-horror novel in its own right.) King signposts both of these aspects of the novel rather obviously through conversations, and the parallels with the Third Reich are also very direct - the similarity between the Hitler Youth and the Dome's teenage police recruits, and Big Jim's eventual confinement to an underground bunker are two examples.

The Mist was mostly about how regular people can make errors, and find themselves driven to terrible acts due to isolation, stress and ignorance. The Dome complements this by showing just how evil and influential people can control such a population and turn the situation to their own ends - and this time the issue is not a lack of information but the inability of external forces to intervene. The Dome has appeared around a town where the leaders and some other individuals and groups are already corrupt and twisted - and they quickly act to consolidate their hold on power. It's not a subtle plot, and this is probably not a book for young children: hot-tempered and amoral youngsters are drafted onto the police force and quickly learn to abuse their power, getting away with brutality, rape and murder, while a series of accidental and deliberate acts leads to disaster upon disaster for the dwindling population.

Apart from the network of cynics who are already running the town, most characters start out neutral but quickly turn to either good or evil. In a situation like this King is probably correct to describe the group polarizing to extremes, taking on the roles of guard or prisoner. Rather than allow human ingenuity to defeat both the barrier and the fascist-like evil that has taken hold, the heroic characters barely manage to cling on to life, and the ending is not a triumph but a War Of The Worlds humbling.

Not Seeing Is Believing [Review: The Mist]

David Drayton and his son Billy are trapped at a supermarket along with other inhabitants of their small town when the mist rolls in, bringing with it a succession of horrors and deaths. They can see only a few inches outside the supermarket, naturally all the phones and radios are also dead. As the deaths continue, some survivors turn to religion led by local eccentric Mrs. Carmody and begin to turn on the others.

The Mist is an adaptation of a Stephen King novella. Thomas Jane plays David Drayton, a small town father and artist who is first seen painting an illustration of The Gunslinger. The film is full of biblical themes such as the Revelations end-of-days prophecies, also several of the ten plagues make cameo appearances. It's intense, claustrophobic, gory and shocking, which are all good things. However I thought the ending, which differs from the novella and draws on Job, was painful and perhaps unnecessary (I also think this about Job.)

In early scenes there's a lot of melodrama and hamming, although acting improves a great deal as the movie becomes more intense and the tone darkens. The exception is Marcia Gay Harden, playing the religious and possibly mad Mrs. Carmody, who is convincing and mesmerizing from start to finish.

This is not a simple horror-entertainment movie, particularly given the ending which left me feeling unsettled. There's a lot of cynical religion-bashing and you might think this was the point. However in a short, unexplained scene Mrs. Carmody faces her death but is spared. When Drayton tries to convince the employees of his hunch about danger, they argue against it from a position of rationality. Jumping to conclusions and misplaced conviction is the common thread: the survivors who accept Mrs. Carmody's prophecies, Drayton's ill-fated decision to venture out to the pharmacist which leaves several of his party dead, or his final, terrible choice, Amanda's belief that people are basically good and won't turn to human sacrifice within hours of the siege.

Certainty is the killer whether religious or rational - you can only see a few inches in front of your face, so however sure you feel in your convictions, you can still be wrong, and knowing the limits of your own knowledge is what might have saved you.