All the right elements, and yet

Rating: 5/10 (23 June 2015)

First of all, let me say right up front that this is a very good movie. Not an AFI Top 100, but very good. And it ought to be, as it has all the right components: a seasoned writer/director with several outstanding films to his credit, notably "The Green Mile" and "The Shawshank Redemption"; a super-solid cast; a good music score (except for the use of that annoying, vaguely Balkan/Mediterranean/Middle-Eastern wailing women chorus to signifying deep tragedy—please, give it a rest already), a depressing visual look suitable to the story, and workmanlike dialog.
Yet with all that, I gave it only a "5" score. Maybe a "6" would have been more appropriate but I deducted a point for no one having punched Marcia Gay Harden in the chops early on in the film (10 points credit to her acting for that). My fundamental disappointment with this movie is (1) that it somehow never became greater than the sum of its parts, and (2) it was predictable—even the controversial ending, to some extent, and the final final ending, absolutely.
Just as with sorority house slasher films, where you can reliably warn the cute blond NOT to open the door to the room in the attic, in "The Mist" you could generally finger which character was going to make it to the end alive or not, almost as soon as he or she was introduced in the story (spoiler alert: it's a horror movie, some people die). You can predict how many of the action sequences are going to play out, what the consequences of excess lighting will likely be, and which characters will rise to the occasion and which won't, (with one exception). In fact, my biggest surprise was a car starting promptly and driving off when needed, rather than the typical horror movie cliché of an endlessly grinding starter and/or tire stuck in the mud.
On the plus side, the film did a quite good job of using the considerable acting strengths of the cast to deliver a fair amount of character development with relatively few lines of dialog. The pacing, though deliberate at times, was neither plodding nor frantic, and the unobtrusive and efficient cinematography let you focus on the story.
I'm happy that Stephen King found this film version of his book so frightening, but for me, the most chilling part of the movie was the frozen food section in the supermarket.