Reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead... Especially in Black and White

Rating: 9/10 (29 March 2008)

I don't think I've spoiled anything, but be cautious, depending on how sensitive you are!!
It's official: Frank Darabont should be the only person permitted to adapt a Stephen King story to the screen. He understands the genre, the characters (especially the secondary ones, which are something that King values in his books), and how to scare the bejeesus out of his audience.
I recently saw the special edition DVD, which features a cut of the film in black and white (Darabont's preferred version), and the lack of colour seriously helps the film. Black and white has an amazing ability to make CGI (which looks computer-animated, even when it's done right) look absolutely real - even when everything else does not. It also gives the film an eerie atmosphere that reminds me of classic shockers like Night of the Living Dead.
The only place this film lacks is the creatures themselves. This is more a criticism of King, than of Darabont, since they were fairly faithful to the original novella. They were a little too elaborate to seem like they came out of a natural eco-system (tentacles that eat people?... well, I guess anything's possible, but still...). That said, the dynamic between the poisonous bugs and their bird-like predators was interesting, and realistic enough.
The camera work in this film is something that is new to many films - especially one by Darabont (who has been compared to Kubrick due to his demand for control over his camera). Here, he threw control to the wind, and with the exception of the night-attack sequence, he didn't even storyboard. Since the cameras basically improvised, there were no restrictions on the actors, and many of them commented that it was the closest thing they'd experienced to stage-work on film. The result is a documentary-style film that puts us right in the middle of the action.
Probably one of the most effective things in this film is the realism, and I'm not talking about monsters, here (which were very elaborate; too much, some have commented). Instead, I'm talking about people's response to fear. In the space of two days, the inhabitants of the small town turn from a decent, civilized community, into a pack of religious zealots bent on blood sacrifice. For anyone who says this is too over the top, they probably have forgotten just how long it took for murders and looting to erupt during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
And to cap it off, Darabont has written some of the most chilling scenes (added to the story) ever put on film, not the least of which is the ending, which I will not spoil for those who haven't seen it. King, who rarely likes it when people alter his work, has said that it is the ending he wishes he'd written. It just goes to show how much faith the two have in humanity... not much at all.