Generally mediocre, but what an ending!

Rating: 7/10 (4 February 2009)

Another review arising from a spontaneous DVD purchase of a film based on a Stephen King story.
Some have compared this to John Carpenter's 1980 effort "The Fog", which I liked, though many didn't. The broad outlines are similar  a small American waterfront town is engulfed by a mysterious mist/fog and a group of figures, some heroic, battles for survival against the hideous monsters the mist/fog conceals.
Carpenter's film is wholly supernatural, but this story has a  sort of  scientific explanation, which, it must be said, only partly works. A selection of stock characters whose types we know from other King stories  religious nut, skeptic who won't believe anything even when his nose is rubbed in it, various rednecks and lowlifes, manly hero  are added to the brew.
The monsters work best when we don't see them clearly  when they are spectral figures looming through the eponymous mist. Seen close up, they just look silly. The performances are no better than satisfactory, with the exceptions of Marcia Gay Harden, whose religious loony is enjoyably nauseating, the always reliable Frances Sternhagen in a small role, and Toby Jones as the apparently timid supermarket employee who shows a surprising strength when the chips are down. Script and music are adequate.
With all this and a rather routine roll of gory killings, this might have ranked as just another mediocre film version of a Stephen King work. But then come the closing ten minutes. The conclusion simply left me gaping at the screen. It is savage and the dreadful irony of what has happened is possibly the most frightening thing about the whole film.
Rating: 7/10, of which at least 2 come from the ending alone.