I think this is a fair review:

Rating: 2/10 (20 April 2008)

-This is for those who have seen the film and didn't think it was the "Best movie ever" First of all, let me say that the director Frank Darabont is a terrific director and has made two of my top 100 all time favorite films... The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.
However, this was like watching Ken Griffy Jr. step up to the plate, swing and miss. I was extremely disappointed. I was told that this was scary and that the ending was one of the best endings EVER. I don't take that too lightly, especially when it's written on the cover of the DVD. I know it was a horror film, I know it wasn't supposed to be taken too literally, but come on... people don't behave the way they behaved in The Mist. Here are a few things that made me write this comment- 1. There's no way they would have let Marcia Gay Harden (who was one of the few good actors) have that kind of power over them. Whether she was a profit or not. And if she did have that power... surely she would have gotten the gun, or been aware that someone might try to shoot her if she held up our "protagonists" at knifepoint with her new posse (consisting of the town folk who had no business being in a posse) 2. The dialogue was tough to sit through. It just seemed forced and unrealistic.
3. The characters were rough as well. With the exception of the two leads... they were mediocre actors who were following lines in a script. There was no depth to the characters and hardly any subtext. The subtext that was provided was pointless.. because the ending showed us that the whole movie was kind of pointless.
4. The army guys. Hated them. Their characters sucked. Sorry Frank, but they sucked. What they just decide to hang themselves in the back room?? Are you kidding me? And for being military men, they sure were cowardly. And for being fresh out of boot camp... they sure knew an awful lot of information about this "mist." Were they military ingelligence? No they weren't. They were about to go on leave. They were fresh out of highschool kids.. and they knew the details of this secret military operation. And how do they deal with it? They hang themselves? Way to go. If the characters were smarter, or likable, or more significant, er.. believable... then maybe we would care when they die. The way it was, I found it hard to care about them because they seemed fake. The actors sucked too.
4. The ending. OK, fine. I know it sounds good on paper... kill everyone. But really? Why not wait till the monster is right in front of you, or until you have no other option... or why not have a confrontation with the monster? Or how bout just end the movie by saying the line "there's 4 bullets left".. and not show it? The audience invested in these characters, then bam.. everybody's dead except for our hero and the viewer is left feeling like crap... not to mention- feeling like our hero was a total pus#y. It was really depressing, and not worth sitting through the whole spectacle of this ridiculous plot, to not have anything come out of it. - I understand wanting to do something different. And it was. It just didn't resonate at all with me. Stephen King didn't even write the ending that way. He stopped it after our hero says there's four bullets left. He left it up to the imagination. Did they make it or not? I don't know, it just seemed too easy to me to kill everyone. It was a cop-out.
So, great director... just a sh#t#y movie. It happens. Steven Speilburg made AI, the Coen's made Intolerable Cruelty and Frank Darabont made The Mist. I hope he gets his groove back for Fahrenheit 451. That's all