One of the worst scripts ever

Rating: 4/10 (25 January 2008)

*** Spoilers !!! *** First the good things: overall this piece of junk is quite entertaining. It says that the army is evil, that fundamental Christians are evil. The hopeless end is nice, as shocking. - But it was difficult to sit through the first 90 minutes of this rubbish, without laughing out loud all the time, and thus disturbing the audience in the theater. It was hard to stay quiet... I wanted to make fun all the time: 1st) the dialogues were the silliest, most stupid ones I remember in any mainstream, multi-million $$$ trash. Well, there are some Ed Wood movies with similar bad dialogue... 2nd) The wife (thank god she disappeared quickly from the movie - her grimacing made me sick!) and the boy were the greatest over-actors ever - again, I thought some high school pupils were trying to imitate Ed Wood. 3rd) type casting was pushed into its extremes - the characters looked so typical as if they had been animated for Japanese television. 4th) the characters acted so unbelievably stupid as if their brains had been sucked out already by all those bloodsucking freak creatures. 5th) the delayed tentacle melt-down. WHY did it wait so long? 6th) the „good“ soldier (typecasted as „The-guy-in-„Pearl-Harbour“-Josh-what’s-his-name?-Lookalike“) looked like an alien, with all this make-up, eyebrows and expressionist expressions. 7th) the fact that none of the characters knew the „Alien“-movies. Didn’t they live on planet earth before this mist?!?
And here I reached the point to mention good movies which were ripped off by this bad mist-movie. Better watch these movies again, instead of „Mist“: 1st) „Alien“ and „Aliens“ were copied. James Cameron’s team should sue Darabont for using his ideas and copying the images.
2nd) Romero’s „Night of the living dead“ and „Dawn of the dead“ also saw „normal“ people trapped by bloodsucking beasts („Dawn...“ even took place in a supermarket, too). But I believed what their characters were doing and saying. In Romero’s stories they had no better choice to react. There was logic. But in „Mist“ I always fell out of the movie, because the characters were so stupid, acted so out of story and logic: they acted without relating to what was happening around them. They even say „Let’s get out of here“ or „Turn off the lights“ or „Use the axe“ or „How can I persuade you?“ or „I will find a way“ - but they don‘t DO it. They ignore what they said a second ago. A good movie imitates life: there is no delay, no talking - just doing. In „Mist“ there is: NOTHING. The action always had to stop and wait for the stupid characters to collect their brains. And the characters shout then they need to be quiet, they switch their lights on when they should hide, they kill themselves when they should fill up their gas tanks...
And Romero’s movies had Afro-American HEROES, while the family-father was the asshole. But in the ugly, racist, old-fashioned „Mist“, the Afro-American Single is the asshole, while the WASP family man is (intended as) the good guy. At least, in the end, the wonderful white guy gets the punishment for all (t)his stupidity: so I also got my reward for sitting through this movie scum.
3rd) De Palma’s „Carrie“: I guess that the annoying and endless „fundamental Christians bashing“ is Stephen King’s influence; but „Carrie“ 1 + 2 were more than sufficient to let us all become Pantheists or Atheists.
4th) Hitchcock’s „The Birds“ also had a group of passersby-people hiding in some kind of paradise (a pub), while greedy animals tried to eat them. But this part of the „The Birds“ only lasted a few minutes, before Hitchcock was clever enough to blow the pub out of the story (in a big explosion) (the following story „family in their home“ is not what „Mist“ is ripping off). While „Mist“ stayed nearly two hours in the supermarket, annoying us with unnecessary love affairs and repetitive, seemingly endless religious preachings - so annoying that the audience in my theater applauded when the preaching finally stopped.
Better watch this turkey award candidate at home, so your laughter won’t disturb anybody.