Won't clean house at the Oscars, but a superb King adaptation

Rating: 10/10 (12 November 2009)

On its merits as a piece of film alone, I might give it 6.5 or 7 stars, five being indifferent. But because the makers took one of my all time favorite Stephen King novellas and made it into a truly entertaining movie, I have to give this all the love at my disposal. The performances were consistently good and occasionally great -- looking at you, Nathan Gamble -- with a complete absence of cringe-worthy characters or lines. Of course the mist helps, but there were some superb bits of special effects work in there too. The writing allowed for the rapid yet effective establishment of a wide range of characters. Though more than a handful of stock conventions were employed -- light the blasted mop already! -- most were lightly weighted enough to feel more accessory than pivotal. And besides, King invented a lot of these clichÃ©s, so his movies are free to include them as far as I'm concerned. The film conveyed an even pacing that built convincingly to a series of profoundly intense mini-crescendos. At a few points in this movie, I was overcome by a visceral reaction my body usually reserves for only the most intense films, and at least once I was compelled to shout something at or with a character. You could do much worse than this movie for a horror, action or drama film to fill two hours of your life. Eagerly looking forward to the next Darabont/King collaboration.