Great movie

Rating: 7/10 (2 December 2007)

A lot of people seem to be comparing this to The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, but a better comparison is to Lord of the Files. The difference The Mist, though, is that the beasties are real.
Residents of a small Maine community (the usual Stephen King setting) are trapped in a grocery store by a mysterious mist which hides mysterious monsters. Along with the battle against the monsters, the characters battle each other and their own natures in a good illustration of the primal side of humanity and what happens when society devolves.
There is also a realistic illustration of how in times of crisis there are acts of amazing compassion and bravery, but also ones of cruelty and self preserving. The protagonists are the group who remain rational for as long as possible, and the antagonists a group who fall into the group hysteria stirred up by a religious zealot played by Marcia Gay Harden. Some have said she overacted the role, but I think she pulled it off brilliantly in that she achieved what she should when playing an antagonist....she got everyone to hate her. I live right smack in the middle of the Bible belt in a community where several real Mrs. Carmodys live, but when Harden's character was finally killed I wasn't the first to applaud! SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING The ending was horrifying, gut wrenching, and I absolutely loved it! Searching for a moral in it probably isn't the best idea. It's better to look at it as just a dramatic tragedy. It seems so pointless, but you realize that it really couldn't have been avoided without the 20/20 vision that hindsight allows.