Movies
The Mist
Based on Stephen King's story, this horror film focuses on a group of Maine residents trapped in a grocery store and fighting blood-thirsty creatures unleashed by a dangerous fog.
Genre:
Horror
MPAA Rating:
Starring:
Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Andre Braugher
Director:
Frank Darabont
Running Time:
2:07
Release:
Opened Nov 28, 2009
NOTE: Showtimes are currently unavailable for this movie
Frank Darabont's new film "The Mist" is more political allegory than horror movie.
Darabont is something of a Stephen King specialist: His best film was "The Shawshank Redemption"; he also did "The Green Mile." This time he's working from a King novella. Thus, the setting is the inevitable Maine seacoast village, where commercial artist David Drayton (journeyman handsome guy Thomas Jane) makes his nice living designing the jackets of . . . Stephen King novels. The setup is simple. One day after a violent storm has wreaked havoc, word comes of some kind of crisis at a nearby military base. A heavy, almost liquid mist drifts out of the mountains and soon ensnares the town. By this time, David and his precocious son, Billy (Nathan Gamble), are in the grocery store, which is basically the setting for the film as the townspeople become trapped there.
After adjusting to their new reality (it's raining carnivores!), the townspeople quickly decamp into two cliques, and the political battle between them interests Darabont far more than the monsters in the mist. David becomes the leader of what might be called the rationalists. Darabont insists on breaking his society down by class lines. These are college-educated or managerial types, outsiders mostly. The others are led by the great actress Marcia Gay Harden as the evil Mrs. Carmody. First treated as a loon and dismissed by the elite leaders, she hits on populist chords and soon steals the group's loyalty. She ultimately claims that the mist is God's punishment and that every night, one must be sacrificed to appease his anger.
There's a glib twist at the end, which seems out of character, and the movie could easily lose 20 minutes, maybe 40.
-- Stephen Hunter (Nov. 21, 2007)
Contains violence, gore and strong language.
The Worst Ever!
This was the worst movie I have seen in many years. The charaters were flat and unbelievable. I would have tossed that lady out of the store in about the first 10 minutes. Certianly shot her long before I left. And the ending was equally unbelieveable, distasteful and pointless. And the music for the last two scenes (Dead Can Dance) was like nails on a blackboard. Horrible movie. Very poorly done. Which is unfortunate, because Ithink there was potential to bulid up some tension and have some intresting dialouge, but it never happened. Don't reccomend seeing this at all.
Changing Times
Terror unseen is always more frightening. In Quentin Lawrence's "The Crawling Eye" a group of scientists and civilians are terrorized by monsters in a cloud viewed on TV monitors. In "The MIst" the monsters are rarely seen and when they are, their size creates feelings of over powering fear and helplessness. In "The Crawling Eye," the threatened group unites and battles the monsters. In "The Mist" the reaction is just the opposite; they turn on each other. In 1958 (The Crawling Eye) the world was different; a lot less complex. There was no world terrorism, there was less angst with our government and airport security was practically non existent. "The Mist" tells more of a story of a time that's changed than the story of monsters
What is Darabon's purpose?
As I know almost every readers here has already read some reviews about this movie many times, I don't wanna speak about obvious things that we all know about Darabont's style. Whith a general look at "the Mist", it very looks like a mixture of several unbound stories: - a religious fight between two groups of people - A social-cultual issue about the differences between intelligentsia and jacquerie - an apocalyptical story - a protest to intemperateness in Scientific technology - a philosophical-mathematical theory about the condition of the 4th dimension, etc. and finaly it seems that Darabont hasn't felt any necessity to put any ends to the stories. The biggest question is:What is Darabont trying to say?What's his purpose?
What is Darabon's purpose?
As I know almost every readers here has already read some reviews about this movie many times, I don't wanna speak about obvious things that we all know about Darabont's style. Whith a general look at "the Mist", it very looks like a mixture of several unbound stories: - a religious fight between two groups of people - A social-cultual issue about the differences between intelligentsia and jacquerie - an apocalyptical story - a protest to intemperateness in Scientific technology - a philosophical-mathematical theory about the condition of the 4th dimension, etc. and finaly it seems that Darabont hasn't felt any necessity to put any ends to the stories. The biggest question is:What is Darabont trying to say?What's his purpose?
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