Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Never let it be said I don't give both sides when it comes to a particular film. I have two reviews that came in for Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's THE MIST. The first is a really, really, really negative reaction to the flick and the second is pretty much the polar opposite. Beware of slight spoilers, especially if you don't know anything about King's original story. Enjoy!
Quint, This is my first time writing to AICN. I usually let the other people do the reviewing, and simply read. But after seeing The Mist at an advanced screening yesterday, and then reading three very positive reviews, I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't warn your readers not to pay attention to them. THE MIST is one of the worst films of the year, and there is no dancing around that. This is also coming from someone who has been waiting for this film for a while. I'm a huge Darabont fan, as well as a King fan. The first trailer for this film floored me. It looked incredible. So I was excited that I got to see an advanced screening in NYC. However, then the film started... Within the first five minutes, a friend of mine started making fun of the initial terrible dialogue. I hit him and told him not to be "that guy" who sits in the back and makes fun. However, literally 10 minutes later, I gave him the go ahead. It was just that bad that I physically could not resist from laughing. Now onto what's bad... The script. I'm majoring in screenwriting at NYU currently, and I can tell you from a writer's perspective, this script made George Lucas' dialogue look like Coen Brother's dialogue. It's so flat it hurts, and every action each character takes is incredibly forced. For example... "I promise! There is an alien tentacle in the back! Don't believe me? Go look!" ... "No. I won't take the four foot walk to go and look. You're trying to trick me because of that lawsuit you won a few years back!" What? Are you serious? There are scenes in every horror movie where you feel like screaming "Run out the front door!" In this film, you find yourself screaming things like "Take the ten seconds to explain yourself instead of insisting people just believe you!" That happens every five minutes, and that "confusion" is what fuels every character decision. And when that isn't happening, they simply throw in another biblical rant by Marcia Gay Harden, which by the end are so annoying that I would put my head down and attempt to fall asleep, knowing that if I woke up in ten minutes she would just be nearing the end of her speech. I would, however, recommend this film for drinking games worldwide. If you take a shot everytime the line "There's something in the mist!!" comes up, you won't make it halfway into the movie. And then you'll miss the great explanation of why the mist is ever there, which boasts my personal favorite line of the film: It wasn't my fault!! It was the scientists!!! Not only did this script offend me as a writer, but as a human being. If I was an alien, I'm sure the shitty CGI would offend me too. Nothing about the look of this film worked. The mist effect was nice in the beginning, but it didn't do much for me after they locked themselves down in the store. The only performance in this film that I somewhat liked was Toby Jones, and only because whenever something was going wrong he would pop up with his handy revolver and shoot the shit out of it. Other than that, nobody impressed me. Numerous times mid-film Thomas Jane turned into the Punisher. That was kind of cool, but in a "ha ha that was funny" kind of way. There was an elder woman sitting in the row next to me, and from start to finish she was laughing her ass off. Seriously people. It's that bad. I'm a huge horror fan. I'm a huge Darabont fan. I'm a huge King fan. But I wouldn't pay the price it took to manufacture the paper that my free pass was printed on to see this film. -BlackMariah
Yikes. That's not just a negative review. That's, like, a jihad. BlackMariah really hated it. I disagree and so does our next reviewer: GAH!
I'm not sure if it's too late to be of any use, but I felt like chiming in on "The Mist," a movie that worried me at first, but completely won me over before its rather remarkable ending. I'll try to keep this light on the spoilers. "The horrors of the Inquisition are nothing compared to the fates your mind can imagine for your loved ones." - David Drayton, "The Mist." Growing up in the Eighties and Nineties, the rivalry with my older brother led us to become territorial over our favorite authors. I got Douglas Adams, he got Stephen King. So while he absolutely devoured Richard Bachman's alterego, the best I could hope for was sneaking in a few pages of "It" or "Misery" while he was busy playing Sega Genesis. Of the few bits of Stephen King I finished in secret, "The Mist" was my favorite. The suspense, the claustrophobia, the immediacy and bleakness of the narrative, and the batshit insanity of Mrs. Carmody warped my then ten-year-old mind in the best possible way. So I've been following Frank Darabont's adaptation with great interest, and I pounced on the chance to see it at the AICN Drafthouse screening. I have to say, this is easily the best Stephen King horror adaptation since "The Dark Half." When fidelity to the source material is taken into account, it is probably the most successful Stephen King horror adaptation ever. The movie opens with an ingenious bit of fan service, with Darabont utilizing the incomparable artwork of Drew Struzan to great (and heartbreaking) effect. That night a powerful storm hits, and the next morning formerly feuding neighbors David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and Brent Norton (Andre Braugher) forge an uneasy peace as they travel to the supermarket with David's son Billy (Nathan Gamble from Babel). And then the Mist rolls in. And people start to lose their shit. And this is where the movie almost lost me. What doesn't quite work character-wise is lifted almost directly from the page, so King is equally culpable. The business with bag boy and his boneheaded decision and the dust-up with Brent Norton ring a little too false. Of the places where Darabont could have taken liberties, these two scenes could have used tweaking. Also, what turns out to be the weakest CGI in the movie takes place in the loading dock scene, with tentacles that looks a little too shiny, a little too weightless, and a little too animated. Thankfully, the rest of the CGI in the movie is much better, with Cafe FX turning in work comparable to their stellar job on "Pan's Labyrinth." Once Brent leaves, the movie really hits its stride, with Darabont turning a scene featuring a bunch of people pulling on a rope into one of the most exciting and suspenseful scenes of the year. By the time the giant bugs start to swarm, I was absolutely hooked and all remaining doubt had faded away. Darabont does a commedable job of fitting bits of exposition and backstory from the novel in the dialogue without it feeling too forced or awkward. And while we lose a lot of Drayton's characterization with the lack of a voiceover (a wise choice for a horror movie), Jane does some of his best work, capturing through subtext and subtlety what King espouses through Drayton's narration in print. In fact, the performances are pretty all-around fabulous, with Toby Jones' note-perfect Ollie Weeks and Marcia Gay Harden's absolutely despicable Mrs. Carmody being the two stand outs. This is a movie that had us sweating, screaming, and cheering--a monster movie of the highest order. It incorporates elements of the best in the horror/suspense genre. The tenseness and mistrust of "The Thing," the post-Apocalyptic hopelessness of "Night of the Living Dead," and the "oh my God, what the fuck is that?" scares of the original "Alien." Up until its gut-punch of a conclusion, this is a movie that should please audiences and Stephen King fans alike. But that ending... Holy fuck. It's going to be very, very polarizing, but it's going to get people talking. It's extremely rare that a film adaptation out-bleaks its source, but Darabont doesn't back-down in eschewing King's original ambiguous close. Will it upset fans? Some. But hopefully they'll accept that ambiguity is rarely cinematically satisfying, and given the choice of the usual tacked-on Hollywood feelgoodery or an ending with balls, they'll take the balls. Well that's about it. The movie was great, Darabont remains the world's classiest Stephen King adapter, and the Drafthouse and AICN continue to rule for making the event happen. Thanks! -GAH!
