The Mist is a horror film about people trapped in a supermarket surrounded by a monster filled fog. This is a movie that kept me in suspense for most of film, but still left me disappointed. My first problem is that a crazy religious lady in the store develops quite a following and causes people to turn on each other. I found her to be quite annoying as she talked nonsense constantly through the film. When someone finally decides to shoot her, I was greatly pleased. If this is how Stephen King thinks people are, then he thinks that they are idiots.
My second problem is that movie changed the ending from the novella to be something much more shocking. There is really no way to feel satisfied with an ending like this. It also defied logic: I think that the characters would have looked for a solution to their problem other than what was depicted.
Finally: I can only watch monsters attack people so many times before it starts to wear thin.
Roger Ebert gave the movie just two stars. I mostly agree, but for different reasons. There are moments when the characters, the dialog and the story are very interesting, but the story is just not quite enough. I also think that too many of the characters are stereotypes.
The Mist got a 73% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This tells me that some people like horror films. I think that maybe a similar film in terms of suspense would be The Happening, which I enjoyed a great deal more, but it was not critically well received even though it should have been. At least Ebert liked it.
My friend writes...
ReplyDeleteGood review. I hated the ending too. But I think it was the only ending that had the most impact.
But there is one ray of hope at the end. If you notice the trucks as they pass by you see the woman in the beginning of the story at the market. She had to run home to attend to her children she left behind. No one would go with her. She played the part very well. She survived and you see her in the truck with her kids.
I wish we had a closure for the people that ventured out of the market with the black lawyer guy. But it is assumed that they all died.
I thought Stephen King was making fun of religion, especially with the extremism we find today. I think he wrote this story decades ago, but showing how people when scared will convert very quickly to anything.
There is a disk #2 from Netflix for this movie. It contains more documentaries about how they made the film. I got through all of it last night. They even have a version of the movie in black and white which I started watching but probably won’t finish.
In the commentary tracks there is a discussion about how the audience doesn’t really get much information about why the mist occurred. It is assumed that it was the military’s fault. But the possibility is still open that after the ultimate final sacrifice at the end, things started looking better. Maybe the crazy religious lady was right all along. LOL
Bob Witmer