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List Price: $24.95 | | Label: Genius Products (TVN)
Salesrank: 8172
Released: March 25, 2008 |
| Our Price: $4.77 |
| Used Price: $3.80 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A mysterious mist, thick with blood-thirsty creatures, descends on a small town, where a group of people holes up in a grocery store to fight for their lives.
Description of The Mist (Two-Disc Collector's Edition):
Writer-director Frank Darabont, who showcased the softer side of Stephen King in his film adaptations of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, turns to darker material for The Mist, his latest King adaptation about a group of ordinary townspeople trapped in a supermarket by a mysterious fogbank. Thomas Jane is top-billed as a Maine illustrator who attempts to calm the frightened shoppers, but his job is cut out for him from the get-go, first by the discovery of malevolent creatures lurking in the mist, and then by the mad mutterings of Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), a local eccentric who calls for Old Testament-style sacrifices to appease the supernatural forces. Darabont delivers monster movie thrills and understated social commentary with equal skill, and he's well supported by his cast (which includes Andre Braugher, Toby Jones, William Sadler and Jeffrey DeMunn) and the vivid special effects by KNB EFX, which effectively mix CGI with models and stop-motion animation (the terrific monsters were designed by legendary comic book artist Bernie Wrightson). And for those curious about how the novella's downbeat ending has translated to film, suffice it to say that Darabont's conclusion is at once different and more unsettling than King's. --Paul Gaita
The Mist (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) Reviews:
Expiation Nation 
2009-12-15 - THE MIST is a surprisingly thought-provoking film, based upon Stephen King's fantastic novella of the same name.
On the one hand, the film is aimed squarely at King's legion of "Constant Readers," many of whom will take great pleasure in the many subtle and not-so-subtle references made to his other best-known epics like THE STAND, IT, and of course the DARK TOWER series.
(SPOILERS ahead)
On the other hand, the film's ultra-grim conclusion deviates so radically from the original story's ending that it seems to deliver a completely opposite message.
King's novella is about humankind's quixotic propensity for keeping hope alive under even the bleakest of circumstances, while Darabont's film ends with despair, mercy-killings, and unending regret.
And this is where the film became unexpectedly complex for me - what are we supposed to make of our "heroes" - the characters with whom we are intended to relate to and sympathize with?
On a pure surface level, the film's bluntly leftist leanings couldn't be more obvious, and King himself obliquely admits as much in one of the Special Feature docs. Small-town folks are depicted as being mostly ignorant, fearful, blindly patriotic, and - worst of all! - religious hicks. Sure, there a few comically dopey good-apples in the batch, but most are just plain mean and dumb.
The only notably religious character in the film is the fire-and-brimstone-spewing Ms. Carmody, a rehash of the monstrous mother in King's CARRIE. She is a Bible-thumping and hate-filled zealot, whom the audience will immediately and justifiably loathe.
The U.S. military, another easy target for the left, is depicted in the film as being loosely divvied up into two loose factions: the dull-witted young automatons and the ambitiously scheming evil-doers at the top of the hierarchy. One of the three young soldiers featured in the story flat-out states, "I'm stupid," and the other two hang themselves, either out of guilt or out of fear or, most likely, both.
In short, the storyrellers' derision for the armed forces and organized religion all but drips off the screen, and frankly that's their right and it's certainly OK by me. Just a bit predictable and narrow-minded, is all.
So Christianty and the U.S. government appear to be the real monsters, as per usual in SK novels and most Hollywood entertainments. So far, nothing too challenging or worth thinking about.
The big twist comes early in the film with a young woman - whose name I foget - dares to enter the dreaded mist in order to reunite with her 8 year-old child. No one, including our "hero," lifts a finger to help or comfort her; she steps out alone into the monster-haunted mist, while everyone else hunkers down in the relative safety their barricaded supermarket.
Most of us simply assume the poor woman must have been summarily eviscerated off-camera by an enormous purple-tentacled people-eater, or dragged away by some SUV-sized arachnid to be infested with its legion of creepy-crawly Hell-spawn, or...whatever. But, surprisingly enough, we meet up with her again at the end of the film, just after our "hero" has shot and mercy-killed a caring and courageous young woman, two plucky elderly folks, and his own terrified little boy. She is seated with her child in the back of a passing military assistance vehicle, she looks down upon the despairing man with thinly veiled and entirely justified derision.
So not only does it suddenly appear that the church and state weren't the only villains here...but it actually looks like they may even be the heroes! WHOA. This from a pair of unabashed leftists like King and Darabont? Perhaps I am not understanding the story the way it was intended, but it seems to me that military force and stubborn faith are going to be two essential ingerdients for man's ongoing survival in this grave new world with killer bugs as big as dogs and roaming, sanity-blasting nightmare-beasts the size of scyscrapers. Regardless of the evil Republicans' apparent hand in precipitating the catastrophe.
And should we simply just assume that the military really is entirely responsible for the mist? To me, the film's allusions to the DARK TOWER mythos and THE STAND imply that nefarious otherworldly forces were the primary culprits. For instance, because we know that THE STAND's demonic Randall Flagg was responsible for the viral apocalypse that wiped out most of humankind, we can surmise the same may be true for THE MIST, in which it is suggested that the mist-monsters entered our world via a "thinny" - a place where the border between our world and theirs is thin.
Anyways, I'm really starting to ramble here, so I'll stop. Just let me say that this really is one great, rip-roaring horror film, but it also has unexpected layers of meaning (especially for Constant Reader) that might make for interesting discussion with a loved one. Or even a not-so-loved one.
Excellent horror film by any reasonable standard, folks - Darabont's third 5-star Stephen King adaptation in a row.
P.S. Let's hope Darabont or some other noteworthy director finally adapts King's other great unfilmed novella, DOLAN'S CADILLAC.
ending not consistent with the characters 
2009-12-11 - The entire movie focused on the few characters who could ultimately take the big chance to survive. Ending it with a mass murder/suicide of these characters just struck me as unrealistic and inconsistent with their personalities.Enjoyed the film up to the end, it was otherwise quite well done. Ending it this way struck me as shock for shocks sake . I won't watch it again
Hell is other people ... a surprisingly effective and dark old school horror thriller 
2009-12-07 - Sartre, perhaps, said it best: "hell is other people," i.e. we do a good enough job making life difficult for each other here on Earth, so who needs demons?
Following a violent storm that wrecks his studio, illustrator David Drayton takes his son Billy into town for supplies. Once there, however, an unnatural mist traps them in the supermarket. The situation goes from inconvenient to horrific when they discover there are monsters in the mist; but mistrust and paranoia lead quickly to a situation inside that is more unsettling than the unknown horrors around them.
I just saw this for a second time, and was once again impressed by how effective it was in its dark simplicity and how much it resembled the old school 50's and 60's horror thrillers like The Thing from Another World and Night of the Living Dead. It puts the focus on the human drama, and the way that fear and mistrust can make human beings worse than any monster. Marcia Gay Harden's apocalyptic power grab was truly frightening, and it's rare that commercial Hollywood filmmakers have the guts to deliver on a premise as scary as this one, and carry it through to the finish. Compare the ending of this film, which is smaller scale but to my mind more effective and in its own way sublime, to the ending of Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, or to the ending of any other conventional Hollywood horror film and it will be clear how unique Darabont's approach was here, that managed to ramp up even on the darkness of Stephen King's original vision. I'll take this kind of inventive and thoughtful horror anyday over torture porn like Saw and Hostel.
cruel and agonizing
2009-11-15 - this film is perfect even if some people did not like the final moments. Maybe not an exactly scary movie but an agonizing one. You follow the despair of people who dont know exactly what is going on when a strange, supernatural mist literally invades a small town and envelopes everything on a horrifying and almost living shroud. A group trapped in a supermarket by the mist suddenly begins to be attacked by incredible monsters (in spectacular effects)apparently coming from some unknown zone inside the mist. Fastly the group splits in two factions, those who are afraid and do nothing and those who are afraid and intend to take some action to scape from this twilight zone-situation, facing the unknown (oh, there is an explanation, the old cliche, an obscure military experience...). Usually the good guys win and have a happy end but here cruelly the good guys loose, taking the wrong decisions... really one of the best horror movies of this century.
A movie can't be different now days.
2009-11-11 - I loved this movie and i can't see why most people don't like it,it wasn't no Dark Knight,but it had its own style,Yes the acting could be better but who cares,all i want is a good story and that's what we got.I know alot of the folks on here may have left the same reviews on Youtube, but you will still get the latter like me who loved this movie for being its own.The ending left me shocked and had me thinking like damn atleast you knew the military was kicking ass because hey it was their screw-up and they had to fix it.Wish he would had waited a few before he killed everyone tho.That's what happens when you believe its the end of the world and you wouldn't the one you care about to be food for those creatures.Realistic ending indeed i would surely had done the same.But why didn't he just jump in front of one of the tanks when he knew he screwed up big time huh lol.So to all the haters out there who wants a movie to be epic like DarkKnight was this wasnt that type of movie just watch the movie for what it was,a Horror Picture.
