The Mist Details

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[Highly rated reviewer]

Frankie is in a bad mood....

If you enjoyed Frank Darabont's optimism drenched Shawshank Redemption and Green Mile, you might want to think twice before booking your tickets for his latest Stephen King offering.

Where there was alliance in Shawshank, there is deep discordia and fraction in The Mist. No cute little mice or the eventual triumph of Good here, instead you have limb chopping monsters and the film's ultimate evil nasty - Marcia Gay Harden, who excells and will have your skin crawling faster than the arachnoids habitating in the strange mist settling over a (surprise, surprise) sleepy little town.

If you want dumbed down slash horror, you will be disappointed. At a meaty 2 and a bit hours, this is much more of a pitch of human evil against otherworldly monsters, with an almost stage like feel, some great performances and a mostly complete absence of the light at the end of the tunnel.... unless you count seeing the flashlight coming towards you that belongs to someone running to save his limbs and life.

Marvellously bleak.

[Highly rated reviewer]

The finest horror film of the last ten years

A real shot in the arm for a genre in decline, The Mist is the best example of genuine horror to grace our screens in a long time. Forget airheaded teens running around shrieking and dying in protracted, grotesque ways - this is a film about real people reacting in real ways, and the horror comes not only from the parade of creepy beasties, but from the evil within all of us.

Story wise, it's a simple set up that would duffer by being any kore complicated - small town is blanketed in mist and most of the citizens are trapped inside a grocery store. Meanwhile, outside in the mist, there are strange, other worldly creatures descending. Unable to leave without being torn apart, tempers soon start to fray and a religious rabble rouser starts calling for blood and recruting people to her cause. Once that's all in place, the horror starts.

And this film has it in spades. The creatures themselves are great to look at, and perhaps rightly so we're never really told precisely where they come from. From mutant spiders to bats to tentacles, then that particularly big thing that's so huge the mist conceals most of it - it's a Lovecraft fan's wet dream.

But the real horror is the human stuff - how quickly a sane and rational man can be turned to screaming for blood once the pressure starts to build. How a man would go to any lengths to protect his child from the evil. How good, decent folk start caring only about themselves. How mob mentality and religious conviction can destroy everything. Frank Darabont's direction is superb abd canny - there's political allegory here , barely veiled, but it never intrudes into the sharp writing and brilliant performances. Special note should be given to Marcia Gay Harden as the venomous bible-basher, and to Thomas Jane who plays an every day guy who just wants to keep his son safe.

And of course, there's the ending. This is an incredibly bleak film, which for me, is what a horror movie should be. Even if good triumphs, it is at such a great cost. I can see why some people will hate this and I doubt it'll do well at the box office. People want hope, they want everything to be okay, and The Mist doesn't give them that. Instead it punches you in the stomach and kicks you back out into the daylight feeling dirty and disturbed - and that only makes me love the film more.

Horror fans owe it to themselves to see this. The genre needs saving - and this is the sort of film that's going to do it.