Major Disappointment

Rating: 6/10 (29 November 2007)

I have been reading Stephen King's works for the past 20 years. I first encountered "The Mist" in the early 90's and always considered it the finest of his "too long for a short story" group of writings. I love the depth and complexity of the characters in the story. Needless to say I have been highly anticipating the release of "The Mist" movie, especially after I heard that Frank Darabont was adapting and directing. His work on Shawshank and the Green Mile are by far my two favorite adaptations of King's works, I would even go so far as to say that the Shawshank movie is superior to the written work. For the first two hours I was pleased with the overall effort of the movie, it was both entertaining and frightening and stuck to King's basic plot. This is when the Mist ran out of gas for me both in 4X4 the main characters were riding in and my desire to ever watch this movie again. The decision for David Drayton to end all four of his traveling companions lives without much (onscreen at least) discussion or debate not only seems out character for the five passengers in the vehicle, as all seemed to be the strong willed survivor types who never gave up. To see them meekly shrug their shoulders and seemingly say "what else can we do" is just wrong. The book's ending left us hope that these hard fighting characters could be saved. The movie's hope was blown away with four gunshots designed to shock the audience, but in opinion the shots just killed the movie.