When the scary parts of a film make you laugh...

Rating: 5/10 (22 November 2007)

Considering "Shawshank" and "Green Mile" turned out so well, I expected this superb King story to make a superb movie. I'm guessing that the reason for the delay in opening (moved from November 16 to November 21) was so Mr. King could have his cameo deleted so we wouldn't associate him with the film. That is a mere hypothesis, but it's as realistic as anything in this movie.
Logic issues beset this movie. The mist hangs immobile over the lake by the Drayton home, and there is time to take a leisurely drive into town. But when a panicky shopper runs for his pickup, the mist is rolling toward him so fast he can't get his door unlocked (as if people in Castle Rock lock their doors for a quick trip to the grocer's).
The guy who runs in screaming "There's something in the mist!" has a bloody nose from falling but no scratches on his chin and no damage to his clothing. Odd. There is no cell service, no land lines working, no electricity, but by golly the newspaper got printed with the whole Mist story. Was the press cranked by hand? And all those newsboys walked untouched through the mist to make their deliveries. Lucky guys.
Tell me, where did the store get a thousand bags of dog food when there was not much else stocked in the store? How did Jim's mouth stay bloody for two days when the crazy evangelical got smacked across the face, touched her mouth, showed her bloody fingers, yet had no blood anywhere on her face? How could the generator on the loading dock be overwhelmingly loud and smelly except when people talked? There's nothing wrong with having your characters yell over the sound of machinery.
What I'm saying is that the poorly designed "realistic" touches might have been fine in a movie less serious about attempting to mimic reality. But bad continuity and everyday phenomena that just don't happen that way don't lead one to accept extraordinary phenomena very well.
How often does a lunatic talking in a grocery store get ten minutes to preach without being shut up by a circle of 20-30 onlookers? Almost every monologue (by any character) went uninterrupted for far longer than human nature would allow. Why? The screenplay had things these people needed to say. Way too Broadway and far too unrealistic for a "real-life" drama.
What did work well was the gruesome critters, though their scenes were often punctuated by bad dialogue, none of which I can recall other than "I think we may be facing a serious situation here" or something like that. The means used to hurt these creatures were often borrowed from "Alien" and other shows, so that was detrimental to the scenes as well, even if those methods were the best ways to destroy the beasts.
The ending...not tragic, because it showed a lot of stupidity on the part of a few characters. It turns out that ten more minutes of patience on their part would have been a healthy thing. The irony was far too trite.
There was a lot of silence in the film, no music until one key scene. By then, the music was jarring because of its prior absence. I would ditch it.
In sum, the offhanded ill-treatment of everyday life features became laughable and made what was in some other ways a meticulous film a hard story to dig into, a challenge to find frightening. Go see it, but don't expect to see much of the ultra-realistic King flavor in the actual realization of his excellent story. In fact, you won't see King at all.