Top quality horror, lazily-written ending.

Rating: 6/10 (6 July 2008)

Stephen King has a way of bringing out the worst in fictional people, and The Mist is the epitome of fallen nature. The moment the mist hits Bridgton, Maine, fear envelopes the town. Locked in a grocery store after a bloody attack by an unseen monster, the people of this small town begin to descend into confusion and eventually madness under the fear-mongering preaching of the insane Mrs. Carmody. Soon, many horrible creatures terrorize the townsfolk in some very gruesome scenes. This is not a slasher flick, nor is it a Hitchcock thriller. But it hits on a visceral level, doing its best to illustrate the effects of a flood of monsters on the fragile sanity of its victims.
The acting is so-so, sometimes not carrying the weight of the character's emotion. The story itself is on the clunky side, but that becomes surprisingly inconsequential as the minutes fly by. It's a fascinating idea: A government project goes awry and opens a doorway to another dimension, spilling its creatures into our own. The people form two factions. The Carmody cult (not called that in the film or the novella), and the sane. The resulting chaos is nothing short of jaw-dropping.
SPOILER TERRITORY! SPOILER TERRITORY! SPOILER TERRITORY! Now I must throw down my ten cents of opinion on the ending. It sucked. Why? Because not only did it dissolve the motivations of the characters, who were driving into the mist in hopes of surviving to see the end of it, but it was thrown in simply for shock value. I expected much more out of Frank Darabont and Stephen King. It goes into the top five worst endings I've ever seen.
David Drayton and the other four survivors sit in the SUV that has finally run out of gas. They all sit wondering what to do. Then Drayton comes up with a brilliant idea: SHOOT THEM ALL. Including his six year old son. Wow, what a great idea. They run into one monster on their road trip to freedom, go on their merry and all of the sudden it's okay to murder.
One minute after the horrible deed, the military comes barging through the mist as it clears, carrying truckloads of survivors and soldiers armed to the teeth. They have everything in hand, and Drayton is left with his screams of insanity. Is that the ending King wrote in the original? No. And yet, somehow, he approved of this one. I thought that it was the Weinstein's idea, who are notorious for cutting movies down to smash cuts and mindless action. But alas, it wasn't so. I am a Stephen King fan, but not of this idea. This was lazy writing.
END SPOILER.
In short, despite the awful shock-value ending, the movie was alright. Not great. Doesn't live up to previous Frank Darabont adaptations from King's work, but it is something you won't forget.