I’ve just finished watching The Mist, and I wish I hadn’t.  I feel this movie does not even deserve a review, it’s so terrible.  The story is about a small town near a military base that is suddenly engulfed in a mist so thick you can barely see a metre in front of you, which hides scary monsters from another dimension.  I haven’t read the novella by Stephen King, so I can’t say for certain that this could have been made better or worse by straying from the original story, but I bet it would have been better.

There are so many parts of this movie where I couldn’t stand the characters, they would scream at someone while trying to be quiet, mindlessly wander off looking for their dad and stand right in the way of a creature, suddenly decide that they should kill people because a lady you know is totally insane told them to.  I’ve watched enough doomsday type movies to know that if a giant mist and War of the World style aliens started walking around the military always drops a nuclear bomb on the town to contain it before it spreads, but instead they send out guys with flame throwers to just burn them.  “Don’t worry about how the creatures are 100% dangerous and can barely be stopped with bullets, later on there will be privates with flamethrowers that will fix it in minutes.

It starts out like a typical alien being horror movie where you don’t see the creature and it’s fairly suspenseful but then about 30 minutes in you see the tentacles of a beast and soon after they show off such a variety of absolutely deadly creatures.  Any creature could be considered scary if it hasn’t been seen before, but they have to make them have poison barbs, acid spider webs, and parasitic larvae to beat home the point.  It soon becomes a lecture on fundamental Christianity and how people are all barbaric at heart, quick to follow any mad woman who spouts select pieces of gospel and promises saving.  While narrowly escaping the crazy worshippers who want to use them as human sacrifices to appease their angry God, they decide to escape the fog in their Land Rover.  Sounds like a typical end, where they would usually manage to get the star, his kid, and a new hottie (and some extras if space permits) out of the fog and onto a new life far from the creatures.  Unfortunately it becomes even worse as they run out of gas in the fog and decide the best course of action is to all commit suicide with the gun they have.  Problem is they have one less bullet then they have people, so Tom Jane shoots his own son, the hottie and the elderly people filling up the back seat and goes outside to be eaten by aliens.  At which point the army comes in and the mist amazing clears in minutes revealing all the townsfolk being evacuated.  The is the actual end of this movie, it’s not really a spoiler, the spoiler would be having to watch it.

Things this movie teaches that most wouldn’t:

1. If a crazy fundamentalist is preaching doom and gloom, get on her side early.

2. If a bunch of people decide to leave the grocery store you are holed up in to find rescue, just let them.  You’ll be saved while they are busy shooting each other minutes from being saved.

3. If someone is badly burned, let him die because if you make a trip to the drug store for pain killers for him, at least 4 of your team will be killed and the burn victim will just die anyway.

Rating: Dismal, I wish I had never heard of this movie, let alone sat and watched it.

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