Before I saw this movie I crossed my fingers and prayed it would be at least half as good as my friends said it was. Frankly, Stephen King adaptations tend to be exceedingly shitty with few exceptions, and I loved the novella "The Mist" and saw great potential there for a movie adaptation, but I didn't want to get my hopes up, even after a lot of people told me it was good. It was with great trepidation that I sat down to view this movie (my time is precious you see, and I didn't want to waste it watching crap, dammit) and I'm happy to report that "The Mist" was everything I'd hoped it would be and more.

Right from the get-go I like the lead character here. He's a horror fan. We know this because he paints movie posters, and the bulk of his work that we see on display is horror-related (he's working on a poster of "The Gunslinger," which is a cute little nod to Stephen King). Suddenly there is a storm, and the next morning there is damage to his house, and he and his young son end up giving their crotchety neighbor a ride into town for supplies, and then the world comes to an end. Well, not really. As they are traveling into town they notice a thick mist creeping and descending on the town, and they notice a bunch of army guys fleeing in the opposite direction, but instead of turning tail and following the army guys like I would have, they continue into town and thus when the shit hits the fan and it's clear that there's a disaster out there in the mist, they and a bunch of other shoppers are trapped in the grocery store. I suppose a grocery store isn't the worst place to be in a disaster. There's food and supplies and all that. It's just that an inordinate amount of bad, apocalyptic things happen in grocery stores in movies.

The people in the movie ignore her at first, but as anyone knows, when folks get desperate enough, they start grasping at any answer they can find, and thus a religious nut who offers an answer to the chaos and a solution to the problem, however disturbing that answer may be, will become more and more attractive as the days wind down and people get more and more desperate. Marcia Gay Harden does a fantastic job portraying said religious fanatic, and she was creepier than any of the supernatural creatures in this movie simply because she was so, well, fanatical. I remember from my church days that every time something good happened it was attributed to God and every time something bad happened it was because of God's wrath against human sin and error, and I couldn't shake those memories while watching the movie. Just like in real life, the religious nut is spared over and over again, and just like in real life, the fact that she DOESN'T die is taken for proof that she is speaking the truth about God. Never mind coincidence or random selection of the universe, just like I remember from childhood, the fact that she was spared after yelling "My life for you God!" must mean she's right and that lends credence to any whacked-out thing she has to say, at least in the minds of the desperate and terrified survivors who start to believe her rantings. This kind of terror hits a little too close to home for me, and I respect that in a movie.

Of course there's plenty of visceral terror for viewers in this movie, too. The novella took a more restrained approach but the movie doesn't shy away from showing the creatures in all their glory (sometimes to its detriment, as the up-close focus on some of the CGI effects is a bit too much... we can see how fake they are). From the beginning people in the grocery store don't want to believe that there are monsters out there in the mist, but slowly those who venture
outside get picked off in gruesome ways until there is no doubt about the supernatural creatures roaming the streets of the town. Nasty bugs with deadly stings, creepy tentacles attached to big hulking almost elephant-like creatures, icky creepy spiders that cover everything with webs and lay eggs (leading to some carnage that you will have to see to believe... it's enough to put you off your popcorn, let me tell you). Once the death toll mounts and the survivors in the store are split into two distinct groups, those who follow the religious nut lady and those who don't, it becomes as hostile and unsafe in the store as it might be outside and the survivors who ARE sane have to make some tough choices. Though I want to scream and smack them for the results of their choices, I can't totally say that I blame them. The final conclusion of the film is haunting and moving; everything I could ask from an apocalyptic flick with a bite to match its bark.

Devastating. The end of the movie had me screaming at the screen. It's a departure from the ending of the story, but not so much so that this will ruin the experience for anyone who is a fan of the novella. Indeed, the film's conclusion may well have happened if the story had followed the band of survivors just a few more pages. It's stunning and even though I DID see it coming that's only because I've seen way too many movies. It's that kind of "punch in the stomach" twist that leaves you gaping at the screen, wanting to yell at the movie but speechless and unable to do so.

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