Finally caught this and will say this--

kudos to Frank Darabont for the effort. Seriously one of the most chilling endings I've ever seen, one that I honestly didn't think he'd throw out there (I didn't read the short story by King so I don't know if the movie ends differently than the story). Don't want to give it away, but it was amazing.

Unfortunately, the film suffers a lot otherwise. Now, first you take a very simple story of a storm knocking out power, and a mist coming in that's unexplained (exposition is used a little much)...and I'm thinking, this is more effective and believable than what Spielberg wanted to accomplish in "War of the Worlds". First of all, nobody buys Tom Cruise. But Thomas Jane--you believe he'd live in a little house like this in New England.

All of the set up is fine--it's when we get into the juicy mist stuff that the movie becomes a bit unnerving. People in a store, already frustrated because there's no power, and a guy coming in screaming "Something's in the mist!" and he's bleeding. Then, the mist comes in, and nobody knows what's in it.

There are a lot of contrived emotions the people feel where there is very little backup--understanding that irrationality is a part of any scenario involving monsters and mists and what not. But where it really goes nuts is when this religious nut becomes suddenly a Jim Jones type, and nearly everybody in the place starts believing her rantings and would die and or kill for her.

I just don't buy that. And because of that, I don't buy a lot of Act 2 in the film. And that hurt the film big time for me.

Now, as far as Thomas Jane, and his kid--absolutely right on. Great acting there, and some of the only characters you'll like--but see, that's because Darabont refuses to give credit to the masses, and makes everybody either a villain or a good guy.

Some other elements of the film are really effective as well. There are some "death" scenes that are actually quite well done. Another thing I liked was how some people just disappeared--you never see their end. And in one instance, there's a pay off that really sends shivers down your spine. And, you never really understand why this is all happening. There's a bit of a rant by a military private who didn't really know all the goings on but it is some science project the military wanted to keep quiet and now it's out of the bag. Isn't that always the way...

In a film which is trying to get into the guts of social hysteria, you have to realize there is no good or bad guy. This was done beautifully in "The Thing" in which the monster was literally unguessable...

In this, sometimes the computer generated monsters are more realistic than the flesh monsters such as the religious woman. And let me tell you, the computer generated monsters look far from realistic.

I said the ending was the best part of the film. It really is. Everything that leads up to it is unfortunately sub par and I say "unfortunately" because the ending is so strong.

I'd recommend this, but I just can't bring myself to unless you really want to watch a frustrating 2 hour "social" monster flick that happens to have weird, cheesy looking CGI monsters in it...

I give this a disappointing of .

And I REALLY wanted to like this movie a lot...

well...
pm me the ending b/c i won't see it.

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@audioidkid

I couldn't believe the ending, but I knew from the moment I heard it was a steven king based film that "the mist" would somehow involve either aliens or otherworldly things that he ALWAYS puts in his books.

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