The Mist (2007)

Most modern horror movie are simply ((insert expletive here)) these days. They either end up as a PG13 (ooh, scary!) or they end up with the hero winking into the camera and riding off into the sunset.

The Mist does none of this. It is scary, violent and follows through to a logical, hardcore horror ending. The last horror film this good was 28 Days Later (kinda) or the Dawn of the Dead redo (for sure).

I don't need spoilers to get across that if you're a horror fan and you want to see a good kick ass R rated horror flick, you've come to the right place. Hell, even my wife thought it kicked ass and she's a stickler for logic in movies.

Just make sure you're not sitting next to any plate glass windows and you'll be fine! Oh, and if you read original novella, like I did, you'll also be pleasantly surprised because THIS movie is true to the story it came from.

Well done Frank Darabont for directing a great Stephen King adaptation ... how about doing The Stand next?

Fmovies: I was very impressed by this adaptation of Stephen King's 'The Mist'. I have been a fan of the story since it came out and have played the text game and have heard the 3-D audio version of it. This is a masterful suspense/monster movie that puts an ensemble cast into the untenable situation of being in a deteriorating situation they cannot escape from. We watch as alliances are formed, religious paranoia takes hold and, nicely, the movie takes the time to establish characters whom we come to care for before the true action begins. I dock it a couple of points because some of the monsters seemed a little too cgi, and the middle lags a bit, but the much talked about ending is indeed awesome and I was most impressed by the director's decision to keep the music soundtrack down and even eliminate it completely during many of the action sequences. So many movies nowadays crank the music up to 11 to make up for the fact that their suspense scenes do not work. This movie does. I was breathlessly on the edge of my seat for most of it, even though I was already familiar with the story. Highly recommended.

Pop quiz. Tell me, what do you consider to be the most successful Stephen King adaptation, made for film or television? "Carrie"? "The Dead Zone"? "Salem's Lot"? "Stand By Me"? No! Not "Maximum Overdrive"!! (And if that is your choice, may God forgive you, because I won't.)

All of the above, except "Maximium Overdrive" of course, are great pieces of work. But my choice as the benchmark Stephen King adaptation would probably be "The Shawshank Redemption", directed by Frank Darabont.

Stephen King has been very good for Frank Darabont. "The Shawshank Redemption" has become a modern classic and "The Green Mile" was nearly as good. I am glad to say that "The Mist" is nearly as good again.

"The Mist" is a great film, perfectly structured, but a film that requires patience. It is a film of the slow build and of a gradual getting to know the characters, their obsessions, their fears and prejudices. It was nice to see a King horror film where his great talent of touching on the reality of a small town, has been exploited. It makes it all the more horrific when all hell does break loose, because the people who are getting hurt are ones that you know.

Thomas Jane is faintly wooden. Personally I would not have cast him, but all of the other performances are top notch. Marcia Gay Harden's possibly psychotic, fundamental Christian, Toby Jones' short, pudgy, perfectly ordinary hero, Andre Braugher's uptight, big city lawyer and William Sadler's scared, malleable blue collar worker. All excellent.

"The Mist" is not "The Shawshank Redemption" in one crucial way. Whereas "The Shawshank Redemption" was about hope and life, "The Mist" is about hopelessness and death. One thing that they have in common is an astonishing ending. The ending of "The Mist" is wonderful, horrific, twisted and shocking. Not anything that I saw coming.

"The Mist" is marvellous. Must see.

The Mist fmovies. I won't go into details as I don't want to ruin this film for everyone, but I will highly recommend it! One warning: Do not watch this film expecting a cheesy/entertaining horror, or even a high-quality entertaining slasher as this film is -all- about the characters and how extreme circumstances can bring out the extreme sides of human nature.

By the end of the film I was literally on the edge of my seat - cider forgotten - with my hand over my mouth.

Masterfully written screenplay (from the original short story by Stephen King) and masterfully directed, anyone who is generally sceptical about adaptations of Stephen King "horrors" will be rewarded by watching this, Frank Darabont has done a typically marvelous job (see Shawshank and Green Mile) and well and truly delivered.

Let me take a breath... Never have I had such a visceral physical reaction to a film... ever. Not even with Elem Klimov's Come and See. In the last fifteen minutes I was nearly physically paralyzed, and then started shaking, realizing how numb my body was... and I am dead serious. Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's novella goes heads above a 50s/60s monster movie homage. This is grade "A" chilling, terrifying, unsettling and utterly hopeless cinema in line with the most cynical and depressing classics from the 70s. The Mist itself and the monsters it brings are just the appetizer here. As all good horror should be, this explores the ultimate enemy, ourselves. In short one of the most beautiful, thrilling and terrible times I've had at the movies.

To elaborate, it isn't a pitch perfect film... Some of the CGI at the beginning is weak, and there are a few lines that can't escape the genre, but other than that this is a home run in every department - The performances (especially from Toby Jones and Marcia Gay Harden), the ingenious hand held camera, which is never used as a gimmick. The sound design, the lack of an underscore... This lends to the great atmosphere and tension Darabont builds. I'm sure you can guess by now this isn't schmaltzy, sentimental Darabont here; this is an angry, maniacal man that rears his head and shouts, "Everything is lost!" and then shoots you in the gut. Any fan of Stephen King, The Twilight Zone or Ray Bradbury, will greedily devour this with a great big grin on their face, then feel very sick but so damn happy and then throw up. Best film of the year yet.

If, two years ago, you told me that within a couple of years two excellent Stephen King film adaptations would be released, I would probably have laughed it off. Films like The Shining, Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, The Stand and 1408 are usually pretty far between (Note that I consider The Green Mile and Carrie to be the most over-rated King adaptations, so they do not appear here). I like most of the films that have been made from Stephen King novels, novellas, and short stories mainly because I like Stephen King, but I do not recommend many of them as truly good films.

Frank Darabont's (writing and directing) The Mist adapts a horror novella of the same name. King's horror work has been the most difficult material to adapt, but this film is comparable to other genre stand-outs such as The Shining and 1408.

A brief, dramatic thunderstorm is followed by a freak mist that descends on a small New England town. As the mist permeates the town, people congregate in the local supermarket and hardware store to stock up and gather supplies. David Drayton (Thomas Jane), his son (Nathan Gamble), and his neighbor (Andre Braugher) are among them. Tension builds as a steady stream of military vehicles pass through the mist headed south from a nearby base. But serious concern doesn't start until one of the locals runs to the supermarket with blood spatters on his clothing and talking of monsters in the mist.

Indeed, there are horrors outside in the fog, but there are also horrors inside the market - as paranoia, irrationality and religion come into conflict with practical issues of survival.

Unlike many horror films, The Mist examines fear and its effects realistically, looks at the horror created by forces beyond human control and the even more terrifying horror that fear creates through forces that are completely within our grasp - our own fears, our beliefs and our treatment of each other. It does so using a classic formula which is comparable to films like Night of the Living Dead and, more recently, Feast.

The cinematography, editing and directing are all excellent. The acting is quite good - Marcia Gay Harden and William Sadler stood out for me - and the script is exactly where it needed to be for this adaptation.

Highly recommended for King fans and horror fans. Recommended for Sci-Fi fans. Weakly recommended for average cinema-goers who are not generally interested in horror.