Review of The Mist (2007) by Gabe S — 05 Dec 2012
A couple problems with this one but overall a good film. First the good... Marcia Harden was fantastic! Quite an excellent and despicable character she portrayed. Thomas Jane was also unexpectedly decent in this.
The political/philosophical ideas raised by the characters are pretty solid if a little blatant. This is another semi-decent Steven King adaptation by Darabont. Human beings prove to be the scariest aspect of the film.
Several shots of the mist slowly approaching the town were great shots and gave a great sense of fear of the unknown. The ending was not expected in the slightest. The bad... the camera work was absolutely blindsided by the shameless zooming without intent.
The zooms were forced and entirely useless. I believe the only reason they were used was because Frank ran out of camera angles to shoot while in the store. The creatures were a total let-down in every sense of the word.
One purple/pink poorly rendered CGI calamity after another continues to underwhelm the viewer after a less-than-subtle introduction that ruins any fear of the unknown as previously mentioned. The ending, while unexpected, is unexpected for an obvious reason.
It does not fit the rest of the story whatsoever. It was by far the most forced "shock" ending I've seen and clearly didn't match the character designs or themes previously established.
It could easily placed at the end of the Wizard of Oz and have the same shocking quality but it would expose its random insertion much more noticeably. All in all, Frank Darabont should probably avoid horror films and stick to his strong points in drama.
Unfortunately, since the only thing he can direct well is Steven King adaptations he is probably running out of material fast! Still, most of the film works for as average horror.
This review of The Mist (2007) was written by Gabe S on 05 Dec 2012.
The Mist has generally received positive reviews.
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