THE MIST

November 10, 2009

Apology: I didn’t really mean to see this. I had a pass to see a sneak preview of Atonement, but missed it. So we decided to see The Mist instead.

The Mist is based on one of the 2.7 million formulaic novels churned out from a program somewhere on Stephen King’s computer. You know the drill: Creative guy (this time, a painter) who lives on the eastern seaboard (Maine) encounters a strange force (mist) with additional repercussions (monsters) and overwrought characters (this time, a religious nutcase and an overbearing black man) while trapped in an isolated location (this time, a supermarket).

Ugh … who keeps buying this shit?

While there have been some great-to-decent versions of King novels, most of them have bordered on laughable. This time, however, it tramples all over laughable and now borders precipitously on criminally idiotic.

I won’t even bother with a plot synopsis, since it’s so utterly predictable and heavyhanded that I risk having a seizure just to type it. Suffice it to say that whatever plot King had for this infectious tripe was foiled at every turn by every facet of production. Every single performance except Nathan Gamble as little Billy failed completely, all of them ludicrously over-the-top; the worst offender is Marcia Gay Harden in an acting display of stupendous incompetence. Of course, there is no way to properly perform a script of such terrible dialogue and utter contrivance like the one Frank Darabont has produced here. Darabont doubled as director, which from its quality shows definitively that he should stick to rewriting the scripts of other, better writers. And don’t even get me started on the hideously undercooked CGI, which pale in comparison to some of the computer effects in Tron. I have actually drawn objects with a marker in my ass that had more character and nuance than the effects on display here.

My friend and I literally started laughing out loud near the end of the film, when bizarre, Braveheart-esque choral music began playing melodramatically over the ridiculous finale. This sets you up for the “shocking” conclusion, which Rod Serling would have pissed on as it was sitting at the very bottom of the Twilight Zone reject pile. I hope I never have to listen to Thomas Jane scream again, because I have had more than enough for my tastes.

How did this enormous failure make it out of the editing room? This is the worst major Hollywood film I have seen in a very long time.

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1-31-10
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