Spoiler Review: The Mist

A mostly awful bit of horror schlock, The Mist is pretty much what I expected.

Adapted from the Stephen King novella of the same title, The Mist focuses on what might happen if an evil fog filled with monsters rolled down from the mountains and trapped a bunch of people from Maine inside a grocery store.  Also, the people in this scenario are all assholes.

Thomas Jane (The Punisher) is in the bulls-eye here as father/husband/painter David Drayton who, as a mysterious mist rolls in, heads into town with his son Billy (Nathan Gamble) to pick up some supplies from the local grocers.  The previous night, a freak electrical storm tossed a tree through his window ruining his painting of Roland of Gilead, so he needs to fix that up.  Are the storm and the mist related?  Here’s a hint: yes.

Once the characters are all assembled in the store, the freaky thick mist rolls in and everyone starts acting like a jerk pretty much immediately.  Honestly, if I wake up and it’s foggy out, then according to this film I should walk right back to the bedroom and punch my girlfriend in the face.  I suppose the reasoning behind everyone in town going from zero to douche-bag in no time flat is due to paranoia surrounding the mist, but I never bought it for a second.  Once the monsters start showing up, well, maybe, but before they’re established is really pushing it.  

Some of King’s personal favorite themes manage to shine here, namely his pessimistic view of humanity and his dislike for organized religion.  Two views I can get behind, sure,  and, as a more than casual King fan, I wasn’t too bothered by this.  Something I was bothered by, though, was the speed at which the storespeople fall under the spell of a crazy preacher woman trapped with them.  After a few days and handful of deaths at the claws of the mist creatures, pretty much 98% of the store’s ragtag band is ready to get completely Lord of the Flies up in the joint.

Crazy people, tentacle monsters, gory deaths; this is all pretty decent with some fairly spooky effects until the film lets you know that a good portion of the mist creeps are just monsterized bugs and birds.  Also, the explanation of the mist is a humungous letdown.  It seems that the military base up the road was messing with things they didn’t understand and tore a big hole in reality.  If the source was that lame, I would have preferred not to know.  I liked the film a lot more before that.

A few of the monsters are fun and creative, especially a huge one walking across the countryside at the end, but the film seems content to let us deal with the human monsters inside the store.  This would be fine if anything they did seemed at all realistic, or the actions could be anchored by decent performances, but that falls flat thanks to dialog that could sink a tugboat and atrocious wooden acting.

I’d say my biggest problem is with the “oh so pitch black ending” I kept reading about online.  It isn’t so much dark as it is total bullshit nonsense.  After terror filled days of fighting and struggling to survive against monsters both human and otherwise, The Punisher and his group of friends that have managed to flee the store just give up all of a sudden.  Sure, the old guy with them makes a speech about “no one can say we didn’t try”, but they can grandpa, because you didn’t.  Once the car runs out of gas, David uses the remaining bullets in their revolver to kill everyone in the car except himself.  They all make this decision right away, too.  Why?

It’s as if their thirst for survival dried up with the gas tank.  It’s stupid, pointless, and pretty much a deal breaker.  Up until this point David D. was the driving force for survival in the film, even going as far as mounting a party to search for medicine a few stores away, then he turns around and is willing to murder his son and throw himself into the jaws of monsters?  

Fuck. Off.