Spectacular Disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (20 March 2008)

3/10 is a little harsh, and mostly reflects the chasm between my expectations of this movie and the end result. A horror movie - a *Stephen King* horror movie - with a 7.5 on the IMDb? I had high hopes. Talk about a disappointment.
I read this short story about 10 years ago, when I was a kid, and I loved it. I don't know if I had low standards back then, or if this movie fell horribly short, but something was very wrong here. You should never be watching a movie and thinking of the protagonist "hurry up and die or something so I can get out of here".
There's two things to compare to when judging this movie -> other movies, and other Stephen King movies (they are two very different entities).
Special effects and acting -> maybe a 5/10 for a normal movie, 9/10 when comparing to other Stephen King movies (I've seen them all). No complaints here.
Scariness -> 7/10 compared to other movies, 5/10 compared to other King movies (judging from what people I was with said. 0/10 in my opinion, but I never think movies are scary)
Directing -> 3/10, 3/10. The camera jerks around quite a bit, and zooms in quickly on action, it gives the movie an amateur homemade feel - the kind that worked well, in, say, Cloverfield - that is very out of place when used here.
Character Development -> 5/10, 5/10, pretty much non existent, characters are painfully one dimensional -> there's the crazy religious lady, the hero father, the scared kid, the black guy, the dumb maintenance guys, ... well it goes on, the point is everyone can be summed up in about 3 words.
Dialog -> 5/10, 5/10, very poor, seems like lines were maybe cut out of various tabloids? Taken from reality TV? I don't know. Wouldn't have been a big deal, except for when the 1-D characters are trying to have an important philosophical discussion about the goodness of man, you just can't help but roll your eyes.
Writing Fails -> Normally, I wouldn't say any of this warrants a bad review, especially in a horror movie (who needs character development?) The problem is that the writer had a choice -> focus on the action, or focus on the psychological aspects. There's nothing wrong with either choice, but you need to be able to back it up -> if you want to focus on the psychology of the characters (as the movie did), you need some character development and intelligent dialog, and the movie had neither. A debate about philosophy? The meaning of religion? They ruin the movie, they are about as home here as they would be on MTV. Everything seems painfully trite, pretentious, and out of place.
Directing Fails -> I don't think it's fair to compare a movie to a book, they are two vastly different mediums, but this situation really calls for it -> the book had this sort of "creeping doom" feel to it, the story moved slowly along, very slowly building the horror, until it was on top of you, surrounding you (do I need to say this is analogous to the mist itself?) The movie just sort of drops you into the mist, leaving you wondering "how did I get here?" and "why should I care?"
Movie Fails -> Clichéd drivel.
Again acknowledging that it's not fair to compare this to the original story, the fact remains that I think you would enjoy reading (or re-reading) the story far more than watching this piece of junk (and the story's about 100 pages, it should take you about the same amount of time)