The residents of western Maine are menaced by droplets of water suspended in the air, lowering the visibility — of doom!
A violent thunderstorm lashes out at western Maine, leaving shaken residents without power and scrambling for supplies when an ominous fog rolls in and envelops the town. What lurks in The Mist? Cheap scares, horror clichés and cartoonish performances — and if that doesn’t terrify you, then the CGI monsters might do the trick.
Based on the 1980 novella by Stephen King, The Mist has all the right tools to send a chill down your spine, but just can’t pull it all together. Thomas Jane plays David Drayton, a commercial artist who, along with his five-year-old son Billy, is at the local supermarket stocking up on groceries when a hysterical man bursts into the store, nose bloodied, screaming that something in the oncoming mist “took” a man and killed him.
Thoroughly spooked, the supermarket staff and patrons decide to stay inside, where Mrs. Carmody, the town’s religious nut-job, fervently blathers on about the apocalypse while David heads off to investigate the electrical generator.
Hearing strange noises from the mist, David cautions Norm the bagboy against going outside to clear the generator vents, but to no avail. The door is opened and the source of the scraping sounds is revealed with fatal results.
From there, the characters must endure attacks from the mist and themselves, as theories behind the origin of the fog lead to heated and deadly debate. Mrs. Carmody believes it is the wrath of God punishing man’s pride, with the rest of the group either clinging to denial or searching for cold logic in an illogical situation.
Director Frank Darabont attempts to juxtapose the creatures in the mist with the monsters dwelling within the human condition as the supermarket survivors split into factions and murderously turn on each other as the tension mounts. The psychological drama just doesn’t pan out and comes off as a Safeway version of Lord of the Flies.
Jane deserves props for a good performance, but even he can’t stimulate this flaccid script. Marcia Gay Harden’s portrayal of Mrs. Carmody is deliciously evil, but, like a lot of King’s screen-adapted villains, is ridiculously over the top and one-dimensional. As well, the emotional pacing of the characters to their situation is rushed and poorly executed, with a finale that doesn’t know where to go and is nothing short of ludicrous.
At best, The Mist is just another underwhelming, run-of-the-mill horror flick that fails to do its job. Unfortunately for this film, viewer interest dissipates faster than the fog.
