The Mist Review

This movie is based upon the novella of the same name by Stephen King.  It has a special place in my heart because it was the very first thing by King that I ever read, and it sunk its hooks into me so deeply that I've been a fan of his ever since.

The movie follows the novella fairly closely (as I recall - it's been quite a while since I've read the novella) up to the breakout from the grocery store.

In a (very brief) nutshell, the story is as follows:

A small Maine town is hit by an extremely strong thunderstorm one night.  The next day, as part of cleaning up, an artist and his young son, along with his 'big city lawyer' next door neighbor, head into town to pick up some groceries to replace those lost when the power went out.  While they are in the grocery store, a very thick obscuring mist rolls into town.  Soon they hear screams and other evidence that there are monsters in the mist - monsters not of this earth, and with a taste for human flesh.  The people trapped in the store each deal with the situation in the way that works for them. 

One group - the ultra-deniers - insist that there really can't be something out there that is supernatural and walk out to get into their cars early on.  The screams and bloody body remnants seen by the people who stay in the store testify to the invalidity of that particular view.

The second group - the holy rollers - know why the creatures are here: they are mankind's punishment for ignoring God.  The group starts small, with only the town's crazy lady (Mrs. Carmody), but adds more and more followers as time goes on.

The third group - the rationalists - try to figure out what brought the creatures here, how to survive, and, ultimately, how to escape.  The natural leader of this group is the main character of the story, David Drayton.

The holy rollers sacrifice one person to the mist and try to stop the rationalists (and sacrifice two more from them, including David's son) when they try to leave but the store's assistant manager (who has the only gun) shoots and kills Mrs. Carmody and they manage to make it to David's SUV in the parking lot.

Here's the main divergence between the movie and the novella: in the novella, they story pretty much ends with the small group of rationalists driving through the mist; in the movie, they show what happens when the SUV runs out of gas.  I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, but be warned - it's not a happy one, and it's probably the reason this movie got an R rating.

Overall, I liked this movie in the theatre and I'm liking it more as I churn it over in my head.  The special effects are good enough that they don't detract from the story and not so good that they overshadow it either.  The lack of major name actors helps us, again, focus on the story.  Andre Braugher and Marcia Gay Harden deliver superb performances in two fairly tough roles.  The weakest performance is given by Laurie Holden as Amanda Dumfries - the character's words and actions just never felt right to me.  Admittedly, it's another tough role, but she just doesn't make it work as well as Mr Braugher and Ms Harden do.

The ending is a tough one.  I think that, in the final analysis, it adds to the story and for that reason I think I like it.  It is definitely going to spur many discussions over what the characters did, what they could have done differently, and so forth.