Horror Actressing: Marcia Gay Harden in "The Mist"
Wednesday, June 24, 2020 at 4:00PM by Jason Adams
If you've ever been a big fan of a book that's been turned into a movie then you have probably known the eyebrow-singeing sensation of a book character getting cast by an actor that seems so correct, so perfect for the role, that it astonishes. Think of Alan Rickman playing Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, or of Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter in the admittedly ill-fated Golden Compass movie -- these actors were already the faces you were picturing when you read the book, and seeing the movie get it right this way, it's always a buzz.
I both did and did not experience this sensation when Frank Darabont hired Marcia Gay Harden to play the character of Christian super-bitch Mrs. Carmody in his 2007 adaptation of my all-time favorite Stephen King story, The Mist. My immediate first thought was that Marcia Gay-Harden was not at all what I pictured when I'd previously read this story a good dozen times. Mrs. Carmody was described by King as "an old woman" who ran the local antiquity shop with her husband -- she calls herself "Mother Carmody" and is described as gray-haired, wearing a canary yellow pantsuit with too much clacking jewelry... you could just about picture her scowling from deep the audience of a Republican convention; Phyllis Schlafly's right-hand doomsayer, even giving ol' Phyllis the ocassional pause.
And yet somehow, very quickly, I knew Marcia Gay Harden was right. Not just right -- perfect. There was electricity in the casting -- even before the film had come out I had blogged about the "genius" of it; I'm trying to phrase this in a way that's not offensive to MGH, who seems in real life like a perfectly wonderful person, but there's something about the shape of her face, specifically the way her eyes slope towards incredulous even at the happiest of times, that obliterated my assumed image of Grandma Carmody and convinced me that this, this was the one. Mother Carmody, the queen bee of pestilence and despair, had come home.
And, well, you can address your satisfied fruit baskets to the attention of This Guy Right Here because that instinct proved right and then some -- Harden met the role like a gale force hurricane, knocking trees and power lines down flat in the wake of this particular nuclear-powered meeting between actress and part.
On King's page Mrs. Carmody was already a terrific villain -- published in 1980, the year Reagan was elected President, she's a prim and hypocritical culmination of those anti-Feminist God Warrior types who wanted to trundle America back to The Good Old Days where lynching was dandy if kept in the hands of The Moral Majority. (How horrifiying that this all sounds on topic here 40 full years later, huh?) Before the first night was through Carmody was already demanding a blood sacrifice to her Old Testament God, and she simply cooled her heels until the hysteria of the moment brought the weak-willed up the frozen peas aisle and unto her way. These types know instinctually that to feed off fear-mongering towards their fellow human beings is a banquet forever, never a fast. She's Fox News personified.
Marcia Gay Harden, not even fifty years old when accepting the role, brought Mrs. Carmody even straighter towards that target audience -- with her flat brown hair and oatmeal-drab ensemble her Carmody looks like the elementary school teacher everybody remembers pinching their shoulder too tight when caught snickering during class; the one who, after all the annoying kids had gone home, sat at her desk tearing the pages about the Civil Rights Era out of all their history books. Even a kind comment aimed in her direction is met with an instinctual sneer -- human decency has no foothold for these people, and it's upon a wave of their wretched white middle-class backs that the true horrors, like six-foot-tall spiders and the Trump Presidency, get ushered in.
What I love about Harden's spin is how turned on and revved up Mrs. Carmody becomes by finding her self-assured place in this pre-assured apocalypse -- her confidence begins to read, at a certain point, as sheer horniness. Her cheeks flush; her sweater finds its way open where a bloom of deathly-looking purple flowers, like sores, spread down from her, a bouquet of freshly scented plague. There's a POV shot at one point late in the film where one of Hell's Winged Insects lands right on her and climbs up and over her ample-seeming bosom while she heaves and twitches with satisfaction -- it becomes clear that the Bible's ol' morality was never this woman's actual end-game; Carmody's kink seems to be more of an auto-erotic asphyxiation of the Soul.
Reader Comments (13)
That 2007 Golden Compass movie: Yeah, it didn't work. Kidman at least made sense on paper, even if she way overplayed the ice queen elements such that Lyra liking her came off as laughably implausible. But, even on paper: Daniel "James Bond" Craig as Lord Asriel? No. Asriel's not Magneto (Craig would have been a fantastic alternate Young Magneto), he's Deconstructed Professor X, which is something the miniseries got right. Note: The only place where the original movie is better than than the miniseries (it's usually equal or worse in comparison) is Lee Scoresby.
Great article, thanks Jason. I haven’t read the book but MGH is perfect in this role. I love the way she plays the interaction with Laurie Holden’s character. I think I started to root a little bit for Mrs Carmody from that point on.
I hate to say it, but I thought she was the one weak link in the film. I certainly know there are people like this in real life, but I didn't buy her performance for a minute. I don't know what was off, but I found her one note, monotonous. I wanted to kill her, and not in a way that fit with the film overall. It overwhelmed everything else after a while.
She was SOOOOOO good... the only weak point in that film, was the CGI... the rest, one true classic.
Loved her in this performance, and this is top Tier King. The controversial ending is better than the book version, too. Terrific Monster movie (plus Shirtless! Thomas Jane!)
seriously great performance. very underrated film. one of the few adaptations that really improves on the source material (tho not that uncommon for mr. king!). and that new ending--still shakes me up.
Big fan of the performance and the movie it's hard to forget.
Nicole as Mrs. Coulter is WONDERFUL....and I appreciated a lot Ruth Wilson’s rendition
Really nice piece, and yeah Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter - perfect.
Marcia gives a brilliant performance. The ultimate in religious mania.
Expiation!
I have said this often of your writing--pure poetry. Harden is fantastic in probably the most underrated Stephen King adaptation ever. That final scene is one of the all-time movie enders, right up there with "Psycho" and "Citizen Kane."
I found her mesmerizing in this! She probably would've made my Best Supporting Actress lineup that year.
This was a really good movie until that horrible ending