So Close

Rating: 6/10 (19 January 2015)

Now, I know this review will be lost in the extraordinarily large number already given, however, I want to warn you before you read into this. This film is good but you don't want to watch it just before you go to bed. You will likely be kept awake for a while thinking on human stupidity, and maybe the movie as well.
***From this point on there WILL be spoilers. This is a review, not an opinion, (Though I think that slipped a little.)***
'The Mist' is a good film, yet like many before it's fatal flaws dig into me as a viewer. Primarily the characters. When I watch a movie I want to be drawn into it's world. "I want believe." When elements like such as wooden characters and stubborn script writing pull me out of the rabbit hole, I don't tend to be all that happy with it. But, for any critique I can place on it, I would prefer to say the good things first.
The first half hour was near perfect. A small neighbour-based dilemma and some terrific tension building. I enjoy a leadership powerfully in a survival situation, which is what this film is entirely based around for and hour and 55 minutes. Yes, that leaves the last 5 in a two hour horror story.
When it gets into it's defense phase of the story, it was awesome. The CGI was actually pretty good, not I would expect any less. Violent death ensues throughout the film as one would expect. It even did something few movies do that others may only hint at. It offers some answers and keeps then moderately vague. The sci-fi element was great. The social commentary was, I believe, pretty accurate. You may believe what you will but I feel that in an unknown crisis people will do what they did and start to get primitive and sacrificial.
That, I'm afraid, is where the realistic approach to an unrealistic situation ends. In this film there are two major downfalls: character reactions and the ending, which is also an unrealistic reaction to a situation. In every situation the characters are tossed head first into, they do two things. The first, they scream. OK. Alright. Horror movie. Screaming? Covered. The second being that they don't run from creatures far superior to mop handles. A dude loses a chunk of leg and dies. Another gets face melted and eaten. Fine, but why did this happen? Because they tried to use 12 bullets, an absurdly blunt fire axe and sticks to fight when there was clearly no point. Why didn't they run? Oh, right, it's just a movie.
When someone like me sees a flaw and the only real explanation is, "it's just a movie," then something somewhere has gone terribly wrong. Probably the script. Yeah, it's the script. So this guy, this group of seemingly level headed morons are allowed to gawk at a dude with alien bugs in him, (thanks, 'Alien', we owe you one) but there is no excuse to getting two people killed for a dumb engagement. Run! No one will blame you.
When the religious madwoman manages to conjure up a following of everyone but eight supposedly smart people and a kid until they sacrifice an innocent guy and demand they kill the kid, and the "whore", and then all of the 'willful' people, the eight leave. They hop in a car, losing four more. They drive away to some LOTR style epic/dramatic music. Everything's all cool. They even see a creature like the ones Godzilla had to fight in 2014... Huh. Then they run out of juice. Lo and behold, four bullets are left in the gun.
The last four (plus one child) decide instantly to kill themselves. Huh. I thought these were the willful, stand up to the religious guys. There was no, "Oh, should we fight, go it on foot, or should we, the smart ones, just give it all up and kill ourselves, cause that's the smart thing to do that goes against the whole law of nature. You know, that one about survival of the fittest even though we are the fittest of them all?" No, just, "Gun? Coo. Let's all die. Rather than lining a pair of heads so the main character whose name we've all forgotten can also die before the tanks come around and the mist magically vanishes." That's their first thought. Just give up. Fine, try for an ending like 'The Thing' in the dumbest way possible. Sure, they couldn't get away that made sense. This was JUST ******* DUMB. I can't begin to describe how much that ending made me hate the rest of movie.
But I digress. This is what I think the conclusion is meant to sound like: This is a good movie will science fiction elements, well made CGI and some genuine horror for some people. However, it's predictable,painful to watch at times and suffers from dull characters who barely seem to know right from, judging by the way no one seems to know where the exits are to run. While some may benefit from their endeavour to watch this film, others among you will despise it. I give it an 'A' for effort, 'B' for CGI, 'C' for the poor acting of some of the extras and even some of the secondary cast and a solid 'D' for displaying backwards human reactions to clearly hopeless fights. Defending the store was fine when there was no where to run, but otherwise poor effort. They really didn't care about and organised defense, did they? Oh well, religious nuts will be religious nuts when they aren't gagged to prevent idiocy and blind faith in what seem to be empty human shaped shells waiting to be filled with bible references. And a 'B-' for social commentary.