I was looking at some of the reviews for this film at Rotten Tomatoes, and the film is getting slagged by a lot of major critics because it's too cynical and dispiriting. What the hell kind of criticism is that? So a movie can't be downbeat? An audience has to leave the theater each and every time with a big stupid grin on their faces and optimism twinkling in their eyes? Pathetic.
I really didn't think the movie was too hot, but Darabont did take some ballsy chances, and he should at least be commended for that.
Here's a rough synopsis of the movie, plus ending spoilers.
A storm hits. Ominous mist is seen. A man and his son and a lawyer and a lot of other people barricade themselves in a supermarket and defend it against all sorts of, IMO, poorly-designed creepy crawlies. Things are learned, character development is attempted, giant tentacles and bugs attack, people die.
Thomas Jane and his son, along with a couple others flee the supermarket because the people inside are being manipulated by an evil Christian woman who insists that God himself has sent the mist as a punishment, and that in order to get rid of the mist once and for all, they must make blood sacrifices. An army guy is repeatedly stabbed in the stomach by the woman's followers after he reveals that the Arrowhead Project is the source of the mist. The Arrowhead Project was a military experiment to open a window to other dimensions. It was successful. So succesful that monsters are pouring out of it.
Jane and his son, plus a few others dash through the mist in the parking lot to find his SUV. They battle giant spiders and a giant lobster/spider crab thing that you can't really see. They barely escape.
They drive back to Thomas Jane's house and find his dead, cocooned wife. They leave. Thomas Jane is sad.
They drive south until they run out of gas, but not before they see a 500 foot monstrosity cross the road in front of them (best part of the movie, btw). When the SUV runs out of gas, Thomas Jane takes out a gun and kills his son and the rest of the other people in the SUV to save them from being eaten alive... but doesn't have enough ammo to kill himself.
Thomas Jane screams maniacally realizing that he has just killed his young boy. He jumps out of the car and begs for the monsters to kill him. Something approaches. Out of the mist arrives an army brigade in bio-suits and flamethrowers. They are pushing the mist back somehow. Thomas Jane falls to his knees realizing that if only he had waited a few minutes more, his son and the rest of the people would be alive.
The ending really bothered me. Had Darabont just stopped at one point, it would have been excellent, but he had to go for one more kick in the pants, and I think that took away some of the impact of the
I was looking at some of the reviews for this film at Rotten Tomatoes, and the film is getting slagged by a lot of major critics because it's too cynical and dispiriting. What the hell kind of criticism is that? So a movie can't be downbeat? An audience has to leave the theater each and every time with a big stupid grin on their faces and optimism twinkling in their eyes? Pathetic.
I really didn't think the movie was too hot, but Darabont did take some ballsy chances, and he should at least be commended for that.
The film was remade under the direction of Rupert Wainwright with a screenplay by Cooper Layne and starring Tom Welling and Maggie Grace. Though based on the concept of Carpenter and Hill's original screenplay, the remake was a "teen horror film." Green-lit by Revolution Studios with just eighteen pages of script written, the film was nearly universally panned for the shallow plot and poor acting. As of January 2006, the film has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 5%.
IÂ’m scared of a lot of things. Cancer, al Qaeda, chemical-plant eruptions, careening wrong-way delivery boys on cast-iron Chinese bicycles, teenagers. Land octopi arenÂ’t in my top 1000.
“The Mist,” a pretentious left-wing monster movie with about 15 minutes of alarming creatures and a whole lot of bickering, is a pre-9/11 story Stephen King wrote eons ago that operates in the post-9/11 era about as well as a Studebaker at the Daytona 500.
W . . . T . . . F . . . @ . . . "review"? Holy crap. Conspiracy much. Someone can't get their right wing propaganda crap out of their head long enough to properly review a goddamn Stephen King flick? Who is this bozo? He shouldn't be working, whoever he is.
Good movie, but honestly the ending was really predictable.
I kept thinking the last half hour they're going to leave and get killed and the others are going to get rescued instead. Then as soon as he pulled the gun out, I thought "they're going to kill themselves then the mist will clear up."
It really wasn't needed at all. I would have been more surprised if they just escaped unharmed.
They weren't including themselves in everything. And who knows if they're good shots. Dude stepped up and pwned n00bs.
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I really enjoyed this film, the movie kicked me in the balls and stole my wallet, but I still have its number in my pocket and I find myself pulling it out and staring at it...wondering if I should call.
For one thing, that kind of ending would have been terrible. And secondly, what WOULD have been a surprising ending giving your criteria for such a thing?
I just got back from seeing the Mist it and I am still disturbed, this is a movie that you will feel for a while. If you have seen the commercials it looks like some dumb monster movie, and in a way it is, The Mist was a Stephen King's take on classic 50's era monster movies but that is not what makes this movie work.
During the first 20 minutes or so it may seem like some cheesy Sci-fi channel movie but before long you will be delving deep into the horrors of the human race. No monster is as scary as us, what happens when society breaks down, and we are left alone.
There is still plenty of boo style scares, Resident Evil like (well actually more Silent Hill like) monstrosities tearing people to shreds. Unlike most horror movies, the characters are all real in this film and they all seem fleshed out. You will care for some and watch in horror at what others becomes. The last moments of this movie will disturb you to no end. Easily one of the most depressing, disturbing, films I have ever seen.
I totally expect this movie to have split opinions, there will be a ton of people that will hate it. But if you get it, you will feel it, you will remember this film. Simply put this is the best horror movie I have seen in a long time.
For one thing, that kind of ending would have been terrible. And secondly, what WOULD have been a surprising ending giving your criteria for such a thing?
I.. Just said. I would have been more surprised if they got away unharmed.
And I'm not the fucking writer. It's not my job to think up another surprising ending.
My point is that I loved the movie but the ending bothered me because it was SO predictable. I sat there thinking it would happen. Someone yelled out "I bet a tank is gonna go by," as he was getting out of the car.
Why would that be surprising? It's the way almost of these kinds of movies end. Gotta be happy/upbeat! Can't have people feeling depressed when they leave the movie theater. Or at least have it be ambiguous, so that people can imagine that maybe everyone got out okay.
The Mist reminded me of War of the Worlds, only the latter movie ended with everyone being okay at the end. No tragic, ironic twist of fate. No ultimately futile attempt to fight back against something beyond imagining. The movie is about the complete breakdown of the normal laws of humanity when faced with a hopeless and terrifying situation.
Just...ending, with the cast riding off into the fog, would NOT have fit in with everything else that came before. Even ending it with him screaming into the fog wouldn't have really worked. It ended the way it ended to show that everything that they did to try to escape was just a waste of time and energy. The mist was a passing thing and in the end, it passed, leaving everyone to try to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.
How many times do I have to say the same thing? It would have been surprising to me because I EXPECTED the ending that we got. Other people did too. People said it out loud in the theater.
I'm not sure how you're not understanding that. The ending was what I expected. Therefore, the opposite would have surprised me.
And sorry, but yeah, most people don't want to leave the theater with "oh, he just shot his 5 year old kid in the head for nothing" in their minds. If you don't like that, too bad. There's nothing wrong with people not wanting to leave the theater depressed. It's okay to WANT the cast to survive, you know.
The Mist reminded me of War of the Worlds, only the latter movie ended with everyone being okay at the end. No tragic, ironic twist of fate.
Did you want there to be some trafic ironic twist of fate? Why should they force some horribly depressing "twist" in the movie just to have one?
The ending of WotW sucked (though the rest was good), not because the kid survived, but because of how it was done. The dad just got to Boston and hey, there's the kid. It was anticlimactic and it felt rushed.
I saw it today and you guys know how hard I am on movies, but I enjoyed it. It has some rough spots particularly in the beginning - but clearly the reviewers have forgotten what a suspense horror movie is. Creature designs were a little silly in places and the ending is indeed entirely depressing. Made me leave the movie theater and go pick up my son from the day care center. Overall is a 3.5/5 type of movie - certainly worth going to see if you like that genre of movies or just suspense altogether, but if you don't you may find the movie somewhat dull as some of the character interplay works out. I felt the whole way things went in the store to be entirely believable, but did find that the 'mist' as a character was somewhat overlooked. It was just there and had no real purpose other than to conceal the nasties.
To anyone that has read the book - do they
explain the experiment and the events that caused the window to expand and all of that? I would buy the book just to read through that section - the rest is pretty self explanatory
They make it to the edge of the interstate and it just ends in forest.... after a short while they are able to ascertain that the doorway didn't let the creatures in - it took that portion of the earth to the alien dimension.... they begin to hear rumbling in the background as we see the yellowish eyes of some yet unseen creature... the screen begins to fade to black as we hear the 4 shots and are left to wonder HOW they actually died. THE END
* Fear/suspense - it's a different form of darkness, when you can't see anything more than a few feet in front of you everything is unknown. Unknown = scary.
* Budget - this movie was made for $15m, and they were no doubt able to keep it that low because many of the creatures were helpfully obscured by the airbrushy mist.
* Background logic - maybe it's just me, but I assumed that the mist was the atmosphere/environment of the other world which had poured through into ours (along with all the monsters) when the army experiment opened the door.
* Fear/suspense - it's a different form of darkness, when you can't see anything more than a few feet in front of you everything is unknown. Unknown = scary.
* Budget - this movie was made for $15m, and they were no doubt able to keep it that low because many of the creatures were helpfully obscured by the airbrushy mist.
* Background logic - maybe it's just me, but I assumed that the mist was the atmosphere/environment of the other world which had poured through into ours (along with all the monsters) when the army experiment opened the door.
I don't entirely disagree, but since the book is titled "The Mist" you'd think that it had more of a role, some peculiar motion, or smell, or something. Its just kinda 'there'.
I don't entirely disagree, but since the book is titled "The Mist" you'd think that it had more of a role, some peculiar motion, or smell, or something. Its just kinda 'there'.
What's inside of the mist (the creatures) play a huge role in the story, so I think it's appropriately named. The coming of the mist is what brings the threat. The title, "The Mist," is supposed to be mysterious sounding, too. Also, "The Creatures in the Mist" sounds like a shitty title name.
No it isn't a creature - it just lacks any sort of personality. So for example take Pitch Black. The darkness itself became as feared as the creatures themselves and it had a behavior (watch it in the movie) and while it carried the nasties with it - the darkness and the hope for the dawn was a powerful mechanic.
Actually, I'm pretty convinced that the downbeat ending, while arguably predictable in some ways, was a totally deliberate examination / tie-in to King's Dark Tower books. It's not too subtle about it either. Readers who have finished the 7th volume especially should be able to spot all the parallels. Keeping in mind stuff such as David's party at the end consisting of five members, one of whom is a young boy to whom he's the father (literally, in the case of this movie's universe). The fact that
David shoots them all, including the boy, then lives on in agony at his choices and realizing his failure despite all his struggle and heroism - holy christ, that's some real deconstruction of Roland shit right there and straight out of Dark Tower 7.
The movie is damn good, gets the "mood" of King stories right in a way that 95% of movie and TV adaptations fail, and even if predictable the ending is some cold shit... it's almost too nihilistic, too over the top, unless viewed as a Dark Tower allegory / reflection / alternate reality, which I truly feel the story is meant to be on several levels.
I loved the movie, including the new ending to the story.
He promised his son early on that he would never let the monsters get him. If he got out of the car after doing that and was killed by a creature, the audience would have witnessed a man doing a heroic deed to keep his son from suffering like his wife did, even if it's the most terrible thing a father can do. The military coming right after he did that was predictable, but the audience wouldn't want to sit in the theater for thirty minutes waiting for that scene to finally arrive.
Either path it took would have left you with a different set of emotions.
One thing that sort of confused me was the flying bugs being attracted to light, yet none came to his car even though he had all the lights on.
I thought the ending was pretty original, and not predictable until the last few minutes. I don't like downer endings for their own sake but when they offer something new (not just a "life is crappy" message) I like them. I also thought the whole concept of
this movie was really quite good. i loved the cinematography and the close shots. everyone did a good job of acting, even the kid wasn't annoying.
i liked it better than the novella, actually, though i didn't really like the end. it just didn't gel. loved the monsters you could barely see, but when they were clearly in focus they didn't look as good though there were some sequences where the cgi meshed damn well.
edit: i kept thinking this is what life must be like in whatever small town was closest to black mesa
Agreed! That part was cool and I really didn't expect to see anything like that. It came at good time as it helped build on the sense of hopelessness. It would have been good for at least another scene after.
I missed this thread when the movie actually came out, and was wondering what GAF thought of it. I was quite surprised to see the sentiment was negative overall. I thought this movie was excellent, probably the best I've seen in quite some time.
I never read the book, so I went and looked online to see what the differences were. Now when I saw the movie I felt that the ending was just perfect, classic King shit. I felt the same way about the
people sacrificing the soldier
. Imagine my surprise when I found that neither was in the original. Whoever did the adaptation did an absolutely amazing job. The stuff they added managed to keep the King vibe.
I can't believe people disliked this movie.
- Ollie was the most hardcore, badass character, ever.
- I was just in awe the whole time
they were driving around, seeing how overrun their world has been. When that giant monster walked past my jaw was hanging.
The movie just got releases here in Australia on the 7th.
Oooooo yeah DVD purchase DAY ONE for me! Especially with the B/W version Darabont is putting onto disc 2! That's just gonna give it a whole new vibe
The thing I liked about the creatures in this movie is that they behaved like animals surviving in the wild, eating - not murdering. I don't wanna yap on but I loved that this felt like a cool 80's flick.
When I had read people didn't like the ending (avoiding spoilers as to why), I thought there must have been some happy go lucky hollywood ending that ruined the whole experience... boy are you guys lame (same assessment applies to ending criticisms for No Country For Old Men). The Mists ending had nowhere to go but down! It totally kept with the apocalyptic nature of the story from the physical to the mental breakdown... Wow.
I see The Mist and Frank Darabont as two examples of Hollywood done right. Darabont had the balls to make an ending that WORKED with the ENTIRE movie, even at the cost of alienating some of his audience. This is probably one of the best King adaptations I've ever seen.
What a fucking waste of disc space. You can turn any movie into a black and white movie by turning the Color control on your TV all the way down, or by just plugging in the green color-coded cable if you're using component video.
