The Mist (2007)

June 13, 2018

Movies based on Stephen King novels used to be a seal of quality in the 1980s. However King's rising stature in the 1990s as The Master of Horror gave him a lot more creative control of his movies and with it came a quick decline in their quality. It was either that or that studios felt that could earn a quick buck by churning out a made-for-tv movie every other week by slapping King's name on the title. There are so many King movies that draaaaag… luckily, this isn't one of those!

Frank Darabont, who already had a lot of success with King's Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, wrote the screenplay and directed this film. The film follows a couple dozen characters from a small town who are trapped in a grocery store when a strange mist covers the town. Within the mist resides a small ecosystem of monsters (acid spitting spiders, giant deadly mosquitos, tentacled beasts, etc). The townsfolk are divided among both class and religious lines. As the film progresses they need to learn to work together to survive. The special effects are CGI and not particularly bad for 2007.

The film has very few slow parts with the mist enveloping the town in the first fifteen minutes. We get our first on-screen death by tentacles not too far after that and from there we get all sorts of different deaths by the different creepy creepers. Meanwhile, Marcia Gay Harden steals the movie with her role as the religious zealot who convinces many of the townsfolk that the mist and monsters are God's judgement and these are the End Days. Far from being just a "creature feature," this film is also a look into religious fanaticism, paranoia, military science irresponsibility, and mob mentality.

What will be remembered most is the brutal ending to the film. It is bleak, depressing, and offers little hope for mankind. Without completely spoiling the ending, let's just say it has its parallels to the book version of Cujo or more closely to Sophie's Choice...