Whats with the squealing monsters?

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 2010)

Being a fan of Darabonts previous King works i remember at the time was looking forward to seeing this. The premise is straightforward; 50 or so people trapped in a small town store trapped by a mysterious mist that has descended and surrounded containing a host of monsters/prehistoric type creatures/beings from another dimension. It's the standard 'siege style' horror genre but the monsters are an aside to the underlying theme which scrutinises the human frailties, despair and hysteria. This was the interesting part of the film, focusing more of what is happening on the inside than the outside, but i don't think it was developed enough, as a horror movie it should have been taken on further, perhaps onto the more even terrifying conclusion of mob and witch-hunt type mentality that comes from a breakdown of reality,which was only touched upon. The plot did have a few holes too, it was also a little unbelievable that the lowly army Private was able to clarify 'rumours' of a top secret army experiment nearby to open a rift to another dimension.
The cgi creatures were good, apart from a very formulaic B movie looking rubber tentacle. As is typical, most of them came out in the dark of night which, coincidentally makes them easier to cgi-render into the film. The giant mosquito bug things will get your skin crawling, however the spider things just looked like the flying bugs without the wings, a little more imagination required next time. It would be good too if Hollywood could get out of the habit of making all their monsters squeal like pigs when they get shot or hit with an axe; do u really expect that sort of noise to come out of a tentacle or a giant spider?? As for the ending, i guess it was supposed to be tragic which it was but, without giving the whole thing away, i thought 'it' was a little hasty and could have been drawn out a little to have been a bit more understandable. But thats perhaps being over critical.
I did quite like the movie overall, i don't think all the acting was that strong, i didn't really feel for the characters or convinced by their emotion and thought Andre Braughers talent was under used. The lead guy kept reminding me of the guy out of Highlander too which didn't help. Its definitely worth a watch and better than most modern horror flicks ( although most of its modern competition is trash these days) but this film though i think could have been a whole lot better. 6 out of 10