Nice , but fails half the way

Rating: 5/10 (10 September 2013)

*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS It's third movie by Frank Darabont based on Stephen King book (The other are "The Shawshank redemption" and "The Green mile"). It's the weakest of the three , but not necessarily because the book is not as great . No . The book itself was solid and it should been a solid movie. The problem is mainly with the adaptation.
Let's start with the good things . The movie works really well when it concentrates on the people in the shop. You could cut the tension with the knife. Also the first two meetings with the monsters are really scary. The overall acting is good. The big beast at the end is REALLY IMPRESSIVE.
OK , now the bad things. Thomas Jane is a weak actor and gives a poor performance. The CGI is very outdated . It looks incredibly bad , like from some cheap computer graphic program. I find it rather unbelievable that old religious fanatic who everybody treats as crazy woman takes over control in the shop so easily. And what's with Stephen King and his anti-Christian sentiments he likes to put in his books ? The movie also struggles to say some message . It wants to be anti-war , anti-religious , anti-capitalism all at once. In the end it's all muddled and unconvincing.
Darabont makes mistake by trying to scare the audience too hard. For example in the book the fact that the rope broke was scary enough. Here we also see blood and even a piece of body on the end of rope. In the later half of movie this over the top method of scaring audience becomes really annoying and kills all the thrills. It kinda turns the movie into a parody of itself.
The nail to the coffin is the ending. It was supposed to be terrifying and heartbreaking . It ends predictable , unintentionally laughable and stupid. How does that woman survived , when everyone else who left the shop was attacked and killed ? How is it possible that they didn't heard or saw the army tanks and trucks ? How the army was able to get there ? Shouldn't the beasts kill them ? Overall , it's not a bad movie , but it could have been so much better. I give it 5/10.