Different, original horror

Rating: 7/10 (24 July 2008)

I didn't expect to enjoy this film. I thought it would be similar to a lot of the horror/monster movies that Hollywood seems to be churning up every year. Films which had good potential, but were let down by the strength of the characters, such as The Fog, Cloverfield, Dawn Of The Dead etc. However once i discovered this film was based on a Stephen King novel I was more interested, having read a few of them and being aware of his capability to write original and scary books with diverse and complex characters. The Mist definitely has these.
The outline of the plot is that a mist has smothered a town (and the world, I think) and emerging out of it comes a terrifying bunch of monsters which begin killing the inhabitants. The story centres round a man and his son, whom, with many other town members, get trapped within a supermarket with only huge windows to view the mist covered outside world and the creatures that are trying to get inside.
The thing that makes this film stand out compared to so many others is the way it studies human behaviour in a crisis. The people trapped within the store have only each other to rely on and to come up with a plan to escape alive. A character who stands out is Marcia Gay Harden's Mrs Carmody, a deeply religious and deeply disturbed woman who believes that God is punishing humanity for their sins and they should therefore give a sacrifice to the monsters. The people within the store are left with a choice to either fight her or join her. This makes for a more interesting dilemma in the film to see how they cope with this. I can't help but add that if this film had gone down the road that so many other horrors take, which is to use a bunch of good-looking teenagers, it would have been nowhere as good.
The film also has a very different, if depressing ending. I won't reveal too much but i can't believe that a father would be able to do that to his son. This is only a minor grumble about an otherwise good, original horror film.