excellent horror film marred by misguided ending

Rating: 8/10 (6 April 2008)

Stephen King hasn't had much luck at the movies. I think the main reason is that the movie people usually get distracted by the flashy scary stuff in his stories, and entirely miss the careful characterization that makes readers care about what happens.
They didn't forget about it this time, though. I wouldn't call myself a Frank Darabont fan (director of two other King-based films – Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile). The first two times, he took solid stories and rendered them mushy and cliché-ridden (I realize I won't make a lot of friends around these parts with that statement). The Mist isn't perfect, but it doesn't suffer from those flaws. For most of its running time, it's an excellent horror movie – intense, and grounded by realistic performances and dialogue. (Plus some cool creatures.) But it does stumble at least twice. The first time occurs when a bunch of characters have a conversation the purpose of which is to tell the audience about the movie's subtext. Thanks, Frank. I mean, we are idiots, after all.
But the biggest problem is the misguided ending (what follows discusses tone but doesn't spoil specific plot points). I don't care that Darabont deviated from the original story (I'm not a stickler for "faithfulness"), but what he comes up with fails on multiple levels. The final moment of Twilight Zone-style heavy-handed irony is bad enough. But just before that, Darabont gives us a scenario that strains credibility so badly (the level of the characters' despair does not remotely justify their actions) that it becomes obvious it was contrived purely for shock value. Adding insult to injury, he seems to think he can pass off his cheap shock ending as something deep simply by slathering Dead Can Dance's portentous "The Host of Seraphim" all over the tail end of the soundtrack (it's a great tune, but out of place here). Instead, it only serves to expose the pretensions of someone who would try to infuse a giant-bug movie with unearned depth.
So, this is a very good scary movie... if you tune out in time.