EffectSive filmmaking...

Rating: 10/10 (24 October 2014)

This one just happens to be based on my all-time favorite Stephen King story, and it doesn't disappoint. (Well, there IS one moment early in the movie- the scene where Thomas Jane as the hero is trying to hang onto a stock boy who's being pulled through the loading dock door by a tentacled monster- where Jane's plea for help is oddly flat, without any sense of urgency, but that one small moment- pivotal though it may be- can be overlooked when one sums up the totality of the movie.) Having spent far too many lonely nights stocking shelves in supermarkets (and watching rats in the stock rooms nibble and urinate on bags of rice), I found the setting inspired. (I felt the same way, having worked in warehouses most of my life, when I read GRAVEYARD SHIFT.) The cgi actually make sense in THE MIST: Practical Effects might not have been as convincing, as insects tend to move very quickly, although the preponderance of mist and darkness would've lent themselves very well to Practical Effects. One of my favorite lines comes after the biker-type has been torn in half and Marcia Harden as a bible-spouting religious fanatic begins to cause some un-needed trouble. Says Jane: "I'd like to leave before people start drinking the Kool-Aid." This is exactly what I'd intended to do in a year-long serial story I submitted to a local paper- to be titled THE STORM-, but the story wasn't selected. The pharmacy run is fast-paced and effective, with almost non-stop action, but it's the subsequent scene, wherein we learn that the military had discovered a "view" into "another dimension" (called "The Arrowhead Project") that's the cause of all the trouble, that things start to come to a boil. This sets up the stunning ending, which has to be one of the greatest twist endings in the history of Horror Movies. THE MIST has it all. Highly recommended.