The Mist – 1/5

Mike Grist Book / Movie Reviews Leave a Comment

Frank Darabont directed the Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and now The Mist. It’s a story about a dense white mist that rolls down on a small American (Canadian?) town, bearing all kinds of nasty critters within it.

Well- I didn’t like it. I didn’t believe it. It wasn’t so much the SF- though the spouting of garbage like ‘interdimensional rifts’ should only be done with proper preparation, and only if necessary, and in this it wasn’t either. Rather it was the characters acting like idiots, wimps, and cowards.

The hero starts off like a hero. He takes fairly fast action, he does some cool stuff. But it’s the slow and stupid delays that kill me. I’m thinking- get a damn axe! I’m thinking- what are you, fighting with a mop? Are you really lighting the mop inside a wooden store? Are you just gonna wait while the psycho religious nut whips everyone up into a sacrificial frenzy? Again, and again, and again? Did you really just sleep a whole day away while she drove everyone to fever pitch?

If I’d been there I would have sorted those people out. Gag the nutter from the start, tie her up, lock her in a room. Talk to people, calm them down. They spend like 10 minutes just convincing people there’s a monster outside! For God’s sake, just bring the severed tentacle in for them to see!

Too many shots of people crying and talking quietly. Too much ineptitude. You’re in a hard-ware store. Weapon up! Use shelves to block the windows. What the hell is dog food stacked waist-high going to do?

If I can’t believe the people in the movie are smart, reasoning people, then I can’t believe in the movie. I just got manipulated. The final whipping up scene that ends in a sacrifice, where the ‘hero’ is getting held back by his own people- I was going nuts. Just kill her! Stop her whipping them up and they’ll just calm themselves down again!

Then the ending- as dark as can be. What can we take from that? All we can take from it is- these people were really stupid. And impatient! Hang out, play some gin rummy. What’s the rush?

I feel a little ill. An exercise in serious pointless waste. I’d give it 0 out of 5 but for some of the creature designs, and the unsettling effect of the Mist itself.

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