I'm not really sure what people were expecting...

Rating: 7/10 (21 November 2007)

...from a screen version of Stephen King's downbeat novella, "The Mist," but I'm here to tell you that writer/director Frank Darabont doesn't wander very far from the fold of King's vicious little horror. There's going to be plenty of argument about Darabont's altered ending, that's for sure, but the rest of the adaptation is pretty much faithful to the original tale. Expiation, indeed.
"The Mist" is not going to be a popular piece of entertainment like "The Green Mile" or "The Shawshank Redemption." It's a flat-out nasty horror movie, very similar in spirit (and substance) to George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" and that classic's many cousins and numerous antecedents. It will suffer from not being released when it should have been (can you say Halloween? I knew you could...), although I suspect it'll do reasonably well on home video in the midst of wintry desolation. It's just not what one would call a reaffirming film, and sure as heck isn't joyous holiday fare.
The plot line is slim, as it was in the novella: a group of Maine townspeople are trapped in a grocery store by a preternatural mist within which lurk all manner of otherworldly creatures inimical toward humanity. Our hero, Thomas "The Punisher" Jane, heads a capable cast that includes Marcia Gay "Mystic River" Harden religiously chewing scenery with fine Piper Laurie/Ellen Burstyn enthusiasm, Laurie "Silent Hill" Holden suitably vulnerable as the terrified-but-resilient surrogate wife, Nathan "Babel" Gamble equally vulnerable as the terrified-but-not-quite-as-resilient son, along with a host of capable character actors, including William "Trespass" Sadler, Toby "Infamous" Jones, Frances "Cheers" Sternhagen, Alexa "The Chronicles of Riddick" Davalos, Chris "American Pie" Owen, David "The Reaping" Jensen, and Sam "Battlestar Galactica" Witwer, whose main purpose is, by and large, to serve up nice, gruesome helpings of monster mash, steaming fresh.
Darabont's script is tight, almost overly so, excising much of the novella's build-up to disaster, despite the two-hour running time, and as mentioned, fairly faithful to the source material, ending notwithstanding. "The Mist" has a strong documentary feel to it, due to TV veteran DP Ronn "Huff" Schmidt's roving lensmanship and Hunter M. "I got my start with Darren Lynn Bousman!" Via's concise editing; Darabont's prudent sculpting of King's pessimistic-yet-hopeful study of ordinary human beings under extraordinary pressure keeps things moving along to the inevitable heartbreaking climax.
I say inevitable because my intuitive opinion is that King's original ending wouldn't have worked cinematically; audiences would have screamed for a more concrete resolution. Darabont's grim finale is right out of the Romero playbook, the one he copied from the ancient tragedies, and drives a deeper nail than King did with his ambiguous fade-out. I suspect King realized as much himself when he publicly favored Darabont's change. The message is still the same: stick together and don't give up hope. Darabont simply offers a pointed reminder of what can happen when hope is lost.
The fx work by CafeFX (along with make-up fx from the ubiquitous KNB Effects Group) is mostly excellent, although in retrospect, I would have liked to have seen a little less of the behemoth monster. Some things really are just better left...indistinct. Visual nods to John Carpenter's "The Thing," King's own serial masterwork, "The Dark Tower," and Mike Mignola's "Hellboy" will please devoted fanboys, but this is definitely not one for the kiddies, folks, unless you're that brand of monstrous parent that likes to traumatize their brood to "toughen them up." KNB and CafeFX serve up plenty of grue, including a horrendous mutant insect sting, some nasty burns, flesh-ripping tentacles, acidic spiders, the odd stabbing, shooting, and garroting, a Lovecraftian crab monster that somehow made me think of "Starship Troopers," and a suitable variety of other creepy-crawlies guaranteed to give children nightmares and make young girls cuddle up to their dates for reassurance.
In a nutshell: decently done adaptation of one of King's more straightforward yarns, but nowhere near as memorable (except for that gut punch finish) as Darabont's other King retellings.
(this review slightly edited after second viewing 11.24.07)