Indy.com
Today:
The Mist
Posted: Nov 20, 2007 in Movies
Tags:
I have never wanted to vomit more in my whole life.
And I don't mean that in a good way.
What else can I say about "The Mist"? For about an hour and a half, it was gleefully perverse, ludicrous bloody fun involving giant bugs, mostly unseen monsters and the religious fanatics and idiots who were their food.
Then there was the ending, for my money one of the worst ever for a major motion picture.
I've seen some screwed-up endings. I've seen bad endings, leaving characters broken and unhappy or dead. But I've never seen anything like this.
And I don't mean that in a good way.
The ending is pure shock value, a gut-punch for the sake of itself. It's not about redemption or comeuppance or resolution for the characters. It's about doing something, anything, to shock the audience.
I was totally on board with Thomas Jane ("The Punisher") as the protagonist, an artist who took his son into town to repair damage done by a storm. What he didn't expect was the storm to come, a mist coming off a mountain (where a military base sits) and slowly swallowing the town.
The mist hits, and some townsfolk find themselves trapped in a grocery store, wondering what's inside the mist.
Soon the people divide into cliques, and one person (Marcia Gay Harden) starts talking about the end times and paying for our sins in blood.
It is very much B-movie schlock, but it was well done and fun. There are giant monster spiders, huge locusts (and strange miniature flying dinosaur monsters who eat them), and a whole host of creatures.
And as our religious fanatic starts gaining credibility among the survivors, we start wondering if the monsters are inside the store or out.
And then that ending comes. Director/screenwriter Frank Darabont, working off of Stephen King's novella, is going for a "Twilight Zone" ending, but what he elects to do is a sickening sucker punch to the viewers. It has no narrative purpose, it doesn't fit the story and effectively undoes everything the film has done up to that point.
It's bush league.
It's a colossal miscalculation, and it ends on such a downer it's a wonder any studio head signed off on it. This is one occasion where studio interference would have been welcome.
The combination of King and Darabont produced some of the best Hollywood work of the past 20 years ("The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile"), but this is an epic misstep.
I consider King one of my idols; his book "On Writing" remains one of my biggest inspirations as a writer.
But this film, this ending, is making me rethink that a little.
And I certainly don't mean that in a good way.
You obviously haven't seen "Two Girls, One Cup."
According to RottenTomatoes.com, the majority of critics have liked 'The Mist' ... however, there's only 50 reviews (36 favorable) so that could easily change. I love RottenTomatoes because I can get a glimpse of what a lot of reviewers think in a quick manner.
According to RottenTomatoes.com, the majority of critics have liked 'The Mist' ... however, there's only ...
Yeah, RottenTomatoes is a great movie website. Metacritic.com is a good one as well. On top of movie reviews, they combing the ratings of albums, dvds, books, games and tv shows. The Mist currently is rated 61 out of 100 on that site, based on 11 reviews.
Actually I was more disappointed with the ending of No Country for Old Men.
Well, considering that Stephen King has said anyone who reveals the ending should be hung, I'm not going to be the one to cross that line. The only thing scarier than his prose is the army of lawyers he could afford.
Apparently, the ending in the movie is different from the one in the book. King said he loved the new ending.
For my part, it didn't bother me as much as it did Joe. It has its own logic, although it might be seen by some as existing merely for the shock value.
Frankly, it didn't really shock me all that much. It certainly didn't strike me as a huge "twist" ending. I guess I fell somewhere in between Messrs. Shearer and King.
I give this one three stars out of four.
I saw the logic in it as far as a plot development. But narratively, and for what I saw the movie as, which was a really ridiculously silly horror movie (and an entertaining one at that), it struck me as unnecessarily depressing and Twilight Zoneish, only to the extreme.
I do want to say that up to that point I'd been really into the movie, and I enjoyed much of it, particuarly Frances Sternhagen as the old lady, and the "Shawshank" and "Mile" vets as well. It was just that the ending disgusted me so much it ruined the whole film to me.
All the comments about the ending have me extremely curious. Now I've got to see it.
You obviously haven't seen "Two Girls, One Cup."
Okay...I hadn't heard of that, but after seeing your post and my sister and brother talk about it, I looked it up. I'll have to admit that as endings go, I can't tell you how it compares to "The Mist," because I bailed at about the 10-second mark.
What a terrible ending. I just read the spoilier online. I wouldn't have wasted my time anyway knowing that the ending sucked. I know that happy movie endings are somewhat clichéd, but good lord. In a movie like that it could have used one.
Ok. First, I loved the short story. As a young person just learning to read for pleasure, it was one of the first things that I liked so much I re-read it. I was a little bummed out by a few of the books little touches that were missing like the old lady having a tennis racket and the name of the crazy ladies group being the Flat Earth-ers. But those are minor things.
The new one thing that I was worried about with the movie was the ending. The book ends with the group findings a hotel (HoJo's I think) and trying to find other survivors on a CD radio. The book ending was about continuing the fight. If some suit was going to mess with that, I was going to have issue with it. And if they DARE to put in some sunshine BS…make the girls cry happy crap in at the end, I was going to drive to Hollywood and show someone a 2X4. Ok. Maybe not but you get my point.
The movie ending ….well…(Bracing for flames) …….was even better!!!! It is hard to discuss it without completely messing it up for people. I will say that I glad that someone had the guts to green light that ending. To me the movie ending is still about never, ever give up. Help might just be around the corner. I loved that they tackled a sacred cow. That one character having to make an unthinkable choice. Could you do that? Would you? That , for me, that makes it a great ending.
Was it shock? Yes. But for me it match the tone of the movie. Keep fighting.
One of the issues with movies today is that they are all so obvious. Why do they continue to put Tom Cruise in action movies where there is no chance his character is going to die until the last 10 minutes???? I loved it in Deep Blue Sea when only 1/3 of the way through the film, Samuel Jackson bought it. Or Executive Order. Gives me a "anything can happen" feeling. Makes me watch much more intently. No Country for Old men is a good example of this.
That's my 2.5 cents.
Ocko70