I just got back from watching The Mist. Since Stephen King has threatened to hang anyone who reveals the ending, I shall not do so for you. But I will say this about it: Frank Darabont’s adaptation is straight out of Richard Bachman’s head, which is precisely why Stephen King loved it.
This wasn’t King’s best story. Also, I disagree with him because I do not think it’s the scariest thing he’s written (then again, it’s been roughly 15 years since I read the novella, so maybe re-reading it will change my mind). But the characters are refreshingly real, except for the religious nutbag. (I found myself wishing I could jump on the screen and throttle her by the neck screaming, “Learn some stinkin’ exegesis!” whereas the rest of the audience simply wanted her to die a painful and horrific death.)
In other words, this was no Thirty Days of Night where characters consistently make the absolute stupidest decisions possible. No, here even when characters make dumb decisions there’s at least a little bit of a rationale behind their decision. They don’t go screaming through the middle of the parking lot; they leave because (in one instance) they doubt that anything that’s happening is actually real–it’s just hype.
On to the grades: the script scores a B+ in my book, possibly an A- since the movie is interesting enough that I’ll want to watch it again. However, there were some things about the script that were annoying, and I’m not sold on the ending. Some bonus points do go to Darabont for incorporating part of the King Universe into the movie. For example, the main character, David Drayton (played by Thomas Jane) is an artist who is painting a picture of none other than the gunslinger, Roland of Gilead. Other posters on the wall included The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile (but that’s to be expected, given Frank Darabont did both of those movies too). In this case, instead of looking like cheesy product placements, it fit King’s use of intertwining stories among other stories inside his universe, especially the Roland pic (as those who know anything about the Dark Tower series will understand).
The special effects for the movie were also top notch, and as usual with King’s material the actors had enough material to do a great job looking and sounding real. The only real let down from the technical side came from the music, composed by Mark Isham. There were large chunks of the movie with no music at all, which fit the mood perfectly. Unfortunately, it meant that when the music did play it was quite noticably bad.
Other than that, as I mentioned earlier with the script, the film scores a solid B+, possibly eeking out to an A- if I watch it again.
