The Mist (2007)

The Mist is another film adapting itself from a Stephen King novel and….that’s not really that bad since many films based on Stephen King books are good, but it has to fall upon the director to make it good. In this case; it’s Frank Darabont, nominated for three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe and known for writing for the 1988 remake of The Blob and The Fly II, but also known for directing the brilliant The Shawshank Redemption and the OK Green Mile. So with good source material and a credible director who works well with that certain source material, how can it fail?

The plot is about a strange mist encompassing the town of Somewhere-in-New-England-ville, USA. However, it appears that there is something in the mist that, for reasons unknown, are killing off more random, and underdeveloped extras than an episode of Star Trek. It is then that in the middle of all this, the film decided that it is not going to be a standard shock, monster fest but a half-arsed attempt at psychological analysis of human nature and siege mentality, which it does horribly because the characters are annoying. The plot also decides to abandon the Stephen King school of thought of 'not-explaining-the-origin-of-the-supernatural-evil', by later explaining that the strange purple-coloured purple creatures are from the results of something all militaries in fiction do; scientific experiments that in no way would help the military effort. In this case it’s experimenting with dimensional travel, but that caused creatures from another dimension to appear and attack the human populace. Maybe this would have been a better film if we focused on the bespectacled, bearded scientist at the facility wielding only a crowbar.
In the film, our protagonist is David Drayton (Thomas Jane) whose job is to forge famous Drew Struzan posters while trying to beat a cardboard box in the Plainest Thing in the Known Universe contest. Seriously, he is so generic and bland that any actor could be cast in the role, as well as Tommy Wiseau. Plus, it seems that the mist may have gotten in David’s lungs because, for no reason, his voice changes into Jack Bauer. Seriously, I expected to find out that the mist is planning to blow up the president and David has 24 hours to stop it.
David and his son, either called Timmy or Billy, are trapped in the local supermarket when they find that something is in the mist and it is purple, the colour of evil. It is here we meet the other players in this predictable farce; there’s the token Black neighbour, Brent (Andre Braugher); Amanda (Laurie Holden) whose role in the film is nothing, absolutely nothing. She’s not the love interest since both she and David are married, she offers no advice and can hardly help in defending the people against the purple demons of purple evil; then there is Jim (William Sader), who is probably the most stereotypical redneck mechanic, that he may have created a sort of singularity; Irene (Frances Sternhagen), the old woman who is calm and collected and also swears and throws stuff at people and finally there are three soldiers who look like they’ve just come straight from the 1950’s. But special focus should be put on two certain characters that stood out for me; first is Ollie (Toby Jones), the only likable character. In this film there has to be about 20-30 characters, eight of them are developed and the main characters and I only cared for a minor character who appears in a few five minute scenes, possibly because he’s not too generic; the other character is part of Stephen King’s often used jab at Christian Fundamentalism, Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden). A mentally deficient Christian (subtle) who some how has a least three-quarters of the trapped group believing her ramblings, even when they know she’s mad. Also, no one thinks to shut up the insane woman who could possible make the situation worse with her calls of apocalypse and sacrifice, and that’s what makes her so annoying; she never shuts the fuck up. She is the Jar Jar Binks of this film…minus the racism.

The other annoyance is the plot, it is very schizophrenic, and it creates coincidences that just seem improbably and stupid. For example; a woman leaves the supermarket in order to get to her children (who she seemed to have left on their own in her house) and goes alone and at the end of the film, it turns out she was successful and was saved by the military with her children, and we all wonder how. How was she able to? We’ve seen before and after she leaves, that small groups of people are slaughtered within five seconds of sticking their big toe in the mist. Another ANNOYING example is when purple bug forms of the purple mist creatures invade the supermarket and try biting everyone, and then one lands on Carmody and doesn’t bite her. Why? Don’t tease us with her death, film. That makes us hate her even more. Now you might be thinking that maybe women have some form of defence against the purple creatures, but a couple seconds early before such ‘cockteasery’, a woman is bitten by the bugs. Consistency is a foreign word in this film.
Another really ANNOYING example is when Jim decides to believe Carmody’s words because he became shook up after a previous attempt to get supplies, but he seemed fine after seeing scarier and emotionally scaring things.

If I haven’t mentioned before, the special effects of the monsters are hilariously awful. Seriously, purple. That is what a child colours an alien when they run out of green crayons. And the CGI is just really awful, it looks very amateurish and like it was made on out-of-date software. There are college made films with better special effects.
Plus, the film's twist ending is so obvious that I don't need to put a 'spoiler alert' warning on this review because anyone with a brain (even lobotomised) could predict the twist ending.

If I had to sum up The Mist in one word it would have to be the word I’ve used in this review ad nauseam; purple, I mean annoying. I have never been so annoyed so much by any film up until this one. It’s terrible, clichéd, has awful special effects and very, very, very annoying. Avoid this film at all costs. Annoying

I’m Random Internet Critic and I criticise it because the ghouls all came from their humble abodes, to get a jolt from my electrodes.