A lot of potential but a bad ending

Rating: 4/10 (9 December 2007)

I really feel disappointed by this film, especially since I expect great things from Frank Darabont given his previous works, and I'm a big fan of Thomas Jayne as someone who can pull off the identifiable "everyman" very well.
As a horror movie, there are some okay thrills and some tension, but the habit was to run back to old school tactics and tricks that weren't nearly as innovative as they could've been and the tension was too often out-maneuvered by the fast pace of the story. The idea of an all-consuming mist just begs for some terrific camera tricks and shots that were never used or conceived. The building up of tension between the trapped people could've been milked a little more with a dash more character development. For example, Mrs. Carmody could have been much more developed and more established interpersonal connections between the characters would've add depth to their struggles with each other. In the end, we're left with some stereotypical and shallow character sketches that we've seen in so many other horror movies.
I also think they could've left much more to the imagination about what was in the mist. While they didn't always show you the "full monty" of the monsters, they still showed more than they had to. It would've given so much more if they kept the monsters even more shrouded and played more off people's imaginations, which can be worse than any movie monster thought up in Hollywood.
Finally, one of the driving forces we often look for in a movie is some sense of hope at the end, and while I appreciate the irony and twist of this story's ending, it still leaves a depressing, disturbing end to a story with very little to show for it except to say "yeah, that's what human beings do."