DVD Review- The Mist - Page 3

I don't think they were hearing anything in the car, I think that they were just done with the whole crazy monster world to-do.

Oh, I got it. I was just making excuses for those who might argue against it. The "I agree, but also agree" was poorly worded. Anyway, I quite like the ending and understand where the characters were coming from. Still, I can see why people might think Drayton was a bit hastey. Had he been eaten by a monster at the end, obviously no one would argue his actions.

So I finally got the DVD (the gal got me that and Assassination of Jesse James for me for my birthday later this month), and I LOVE it. The movie is even better the second time around, and the black and white version is absolutely GORGEOUS to look at. This movie is great, and it's probably the most criminally overlooked movie of last year (perhaps of the last five years).

They definitely are hearing something. SPOILER: After the gas runs out, they (and we) can hear a thumping and roaring which they do not realize are tanks and flamethrowers. They also hear that huge behemoth monster with the foghorn howl.

I think despite these things, the finale of the film has an odd calming effect. The singing (soundtrack), the slow-mo shots, the driving/drifting, the lack of dialogue, the lack of attacks, the montage, the mist...

Then... BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!...

Catches the audience off guard a bit, even wiith the foreshadowing. The desperation is mostly internal at that point, a resignation. There's no struggle. Everyone's in agreement. The events leading up to it are so out-of-this-world, and hard to fathom.

I like the ending (and love the film, bought the 2-disc day it came out), but I can see how it could polarize.

I totally missed that. I plan on watching the B+W version in its entirety sometime in the next few weeks, so I'll keep an ear open for that.

That's what I was talking about with the "hand-holding". It's ridiculous to me that people needed a repeat of the events in the supermarket to understand Drayton's actions at the end.

I finally watched this movie last night. Alex's review made me feel pretty good about the blind buy. Anyway, yeah, I thought it was fantastic. Amazingly tense and really well-written and well-acted. I was really struck by how believable all the characters' actions were; I was surprised by what some of the people did, but it was always credible.

As for the ending, I thought it was perfect--very well done and totally heartbreaking.

There really aren't enough smart genre movies like this.


Edit--I've never read the story, so out of curiousity, what's the difference to the ending that Alex mentions in his review?

It ends (ambiguously open) before the car breaks down. They see the behemoth and drive away with some hope IIRC.

Actually, I think it ends with them hiding out in a hotel. The hotel has a short-wave radio and the narrator, David, relates that, until today, he'd heard nothing but static. Today, however, he believed he'd heard two words: the name of a city and the word "hope". There's an implication, though, that it may only be his imagination.

ETA: Just to flesh out what Darkmite said.

I don't need a repeat of the supermarket, I was still, personally speaking of course, in 'hope' mode because they had escaped the supermarket. I understand that they jumped from the frying pan into the fire, but in this case the fire was a much more relaxing place (comparably speaking of course) where the monsters seemed to be ignoring them. I still like the ending, and I still think it was a better choice then simply allowing them to escape into semi hopeful obscurity ala Dawn of the Dead, but tonally the last scene seemed off to me. Like I said, I have to watch it again. Maybe next weekend.

To be even fleshier, they manage to go on for several days, making quiet fill-ups at still-functioning gas stations, locking themselves in overlooked-by-monsters roadside diners to scavenge food, etc., but keeping on keeping on, on down the road. Days go by and they're still in the mist, though, and all sort of quietly resigning to the idea they'll never get out of it. That's when Drayton picks up the city name over the short-wave while the rest of them are sleeping during one of their stops. He decides to hold off telling the others so as not to set false hopes, but he's starting to feel that hope, a little, when the story closes.

So basically Darabont flips the whole thing on its ear. In King's story, it looks like the whole planet could possibly be fucked, but our heroes just may be OK in the end. In Darabont's version, though, the planet's going to be OK in the end, but our heroes, well... Darabont's a sicker fuck than King, it turns out.

Just saw the movie for the first time this past weekend. Also re-read the end of the novella for comparison, just last night. I'll summarize it all below, for anyone else who wants to compare. Just thought I'd clear up what others have have tried to recollect. In short, David Drayton hears (or thinks he hears) just one word on the radio - Hartford. And as for the amount of time that passes between supermarket escape, and the end of the novella? It's around 14 hours, I'd guess - from 5 am to dusk.



- David, Billy, Amanda, and Mrs. Reppler make it to David's truck around 5 am.
- David slips out for a second to retrieve the gun the dead Ollie left behind.
- David notes that there are 4 people in the truck, but only 3 bullets remain. He thinks to himself, if it comes down to it, "I'll find some other way out for myself."
- They attempt to go to the Drayton house to check on Stephanie - but the road home is impassable, due to downed trees.
- At this point, the novella skips forward, it is noted that what we are reading is David's narrative of the events of the past few days. Written at the Howard Johnsons, Exit 3 of Maine turnpike, on HoJo stationery.
- Aborting the attempt to go home, David starts driving towards Portland Maine.
- They get to the Portland area around Noon. Try the radio, but nothing, even though they are south enough to get Boston stations. Either Boston is dead, or the mist causes interference.
- Another 40 miles south to New Hampshire border, around 1:20 pm. Encounter with towering creature, six legs, leaves footprints large enough to swallow the truck.
- In David's narrative, he notes there will be no neat conclusion. No "they escaped from the mist into sunshine" ending. No "they awoke to the sound of the National Guard" ending. No "it was all a dream" ending.
- They arrived at the Exit 3 Howard Johnson at dusk.
- David is writing this narrative at 12:45 am, everyone else is asleep in the lobby.
- David estimates another 90 miles of gas is left. He thinks he could gas up at the Exxon outside - no power, but siphon it. But that would mean being outside for an extended time.
- If they don't gas up here, and find nothing further down the road, they'll gas up later. David writes that they will keep going. He has a destination in mind.
- In the manager's apartment, he tried the radio. At the far end of the AM band, he heard something. Or at the very least, he thinks he heard something. One word. He listened for another hour after that, but heard nothing else.
- David writes that he is going to leave these pages on the HoJo restaurant counter.
- "One word, if I really heard it."
- Before going to sleep, David is going to whisper two words to his son, "that sound a bit alike." "One of them is Hartford. The other is hope."

I also noticed on my second viewing that the lady who took off from the supermarket early on, to go rescue her kids, was in the truck, driving by Drayton at the end of the film. I'm not sure I cared much for that... since the mist seemed to be pretty much lethal if you walked out into it, and I'm not sure the ending needed even more irony.

Drayton survived though. Why couldn't she? Especially early on before most of the monsters showed up. Seems like blind luck. She probably illegally parked in a handicap spot.

I suppose things could have also settled into a sort of equilibrium after a while so that when David ventured out, the creatures weren't just attacking everything that moved.

Kind of like Jurassic Park.

I didn't mind it much. What would have aggravated me would be if the grocery store gang was there. There was something about that last image of them watching the Jeep take off where you know they'd never make it but that Darabont trusted the audience enough to let us figure that out. I think if that was abandoned for some kind of ironic twist, it would have been too much. The panicky mother I can go either way on as a viewer.

The one thing that aggravates me is the response to this film. For years, we've been handed simplistic remakes and sequels that people have swallowed up with the "It wasn't good but it wasn't that bad." The same people that watch terrible Romero rip-offs because they have "zombies" will sleep on this film which explores similiar human themes because it doesn't. It did have its faults but it definetly more closely resembled the more traditional and beloved 60's, 70's, and 80's flicks of the Romero, Carpenter, etc. than all of these stylized wannabe remakes and homages. It works because it understands what made those genre films great without obsessively attempting to literally recreate the most obvious details.

I watched this movie a couple weeks ago and it just completely didn't work for me. The bad decisions everyone made, the one stupid guy being in the middle of almost every cock-up, and just general poor reactions that the characters made. In a lot of ways, it felt like Maximum Overdrive only with slightly better effects and actors.

That was the kind of the point. When the shit hits the fan, most people tend to make dumb choices.

I understand some illogical choices but to have every person in the movie making the worst choices ever is kind of a dumb hook for a movie. They never convinced me that people were responding in a realistic way.

Have you seen the choices of the Bush administration?

What are these choices that bothered you so much? I'm curious because that's usually the kind of detail that will make me hate a movie but I saw none of these in The Mist.

• Why did people so quickly flock to the religious woman?
• Bill Sadler's character seemed to be involved in every single screw up (lighting the torches, sending the Sherminator out to die, getting the Army guy killed).
• Why they were standing around in a pharmacy where tons of people were obviously contained in spiderwebs when they'd obviously seen giant bugs the night before?
• Why they brought plywood out to board up the window at some later point but not earlier when it was getting swarmed by bugs?
• Why did they only stack the dog food or whatever up half high when they obviously had more dog food?
• Why they didn't try a little harder to make the people going out into the mist to believe that they had been attacked by giant tentacles

I don't know, I wanted to like the movie but everything just felt 'off' to me. The characters reactions and responses didn't seem realistic to me. They seemed like typical King caricatures and I just kept laughing at the movie for some reason.

So you're one of those who thinks reacting in a realistic way means for ordinary people to rise up and do what's logical and intelligent in a crisis. Most of my co-workers through the years can barely react the right way in rare pressure situations at their jobs. I wouldn't expect people to do most things right if nightmare creatures started attacking.

I do agree with you that Bill Sadler's character was involved in too many bad situations wich dumbed down parts of the film.

I think for people not to be freaked the crap out by people encased in spider webs when they saw that a single sting from a bug can kill just the night before is not a reasonable "I'm acting rashly because this is a freaky situation type thing."

I'm not expecting them to be superheros I'm just asking them to not sit around doing stupid stuff. I also think that for only being there 2 days, way too many people killed themselves. I don't think that everyone is teetering that close to the brink that they would be willing to kill themselves.

I guess that's the thing that's frustrated me the most. The lack of self-preservation actions that these people seem to had. It just seemed to me that they were too accepting of death and hopelessness.

You need to read up on the events in New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, if you have any doubts about how stupid people can behave in a crisis. And that was just the weather.

I'm not saying I expect everyone to act as if nothing is going wrong. I'm just saying that to me the reactions seemed 'off' and that it pulled me out of the movie.

No, I mean genuine WTF "who would do that?" real-life stupidity (in regards to New Orleans).

• Residents refusing to evacuate, despite flooding, destruction, and chaos all around. People who were more concerned with material possessions, than their own safety or the safety of others.
• Shooting at people who were bringing aid.
• Looting (and not just food for survival).
• Religious nuts who believed the disaster was a Sodom/Gomorrah style cleansing.

Sometimes I need to suspend my crippling disbelief in humanity. When you consider the dumb acts that people commit in real life, I don't find it hard to believe that a panicked group may neglect to finish their dogfood bag stacking.

Same here. Maybe this movie would have seemed differently to me when I was twenty or something but in the last eight or so years, I have seen shit both firsthand and on the news that made me think I was watching a badly-written movie. I mean, long before I ever saw The Mist, I was of the opinion that if anything serious ever went down, we would be finished. Katrina confirmed this. You put enough loud and emotional people in one place and force them to overcome something and it's going to get ugly.

I just rewatched this in color, and it holds up exceedingly well. In fact, the film's grown on me quite a bit. Of course, I vastly prefer the B&W version, and all this talk about a download-only future has me bummed that special edition DVD releases like this one might only be a fleeting fad. I dunno if we would be getting stuff like this if everyone migrated away from the current format.

So I finally ended up watching this, as I was saving it for my October horror marathon. Most likely the best horror movie of the last 10 years. Thomas Jane is aces, and I need to see this in B&W.

By the end, with Dead Can Dance's Host Of Seraphim shredding through the speakers and the result of the ending, I was a wreck. The main cause? I spent the movie with my baby boy sleeping on me. By the end he was still sleeping, but I was clutching him like I've never done so before.

With visions of monstrous inter-dimensional spiders dancing in his head.

Pussy.

Glad you finally got to see it though. Fucking great film.

Speaking of which, "Cinemagic" on XM ran an hour-long interview with Darabont last night. It was specifically regarding The Mist and genre film-making and it was pretty excellent.

I could have seen it 3 months ago, but it's all about Halloween... I'm so buying that 2 disc DVD set.

I'd like to grab it solely for the BW version. I'm sure that's freaking cool.

It makes an awesome movie infinitely better.

It really does, that's the only way I watch it now.

I'm interested in seeing this in Black & White. The screen shots did seem to give the film a different look from the original color version. I hope it helps to mask some of the CGI I hated most notably the creature in the loading dock. That scene nearly killed the movie for me. I would have like to see more practical effects used in that scene. For those of you that haven't read the story, you NEED to read it. I suggest reading it FIRST especially when it comes to the end of the story.

The contrast is higher, and the CGI does seem to blend better(the loading dock scene fares the worst though, just as it does in color). They may have added a slight grain to everything too, but I may just be seeing things that aren't there.

I do not understand this sentiment. If the story is clicking, how can a mediocre special effect take you out of things or "kill" the movie? Were you taken out of Dawn of the Dead because the zombies were nothing more than extras smeared with blue paint? Were you taken out of Godzilla because it's clearly some dude wearing a rubber suit? Did the fact that the werewolf was basically a muppet kill American Werewolf in London for you? If your suspension of disbelief is that weak, I kind of feel sorry for you... especially in light of the fact that King has stated he envisioned The Mist as big ole cheesy horror flick with cheesy effects.

Mattioli,

Nope, all the films you named are great and I love them. Now this is my point... all of those effects were real as in make-up, real people, real rubber, real plastic, latex what have you, those monsters are there with the actors in the scene they are truly interacting with. That is what I love about the old films, the human interaction with the effect as opposed to them reacting to what really is a green tennis ball on a stick... you can tell it's not the same and the effect just doesn't seem like it's really there. It just doesn't translate well for me. You mentioned Godzilla, I think a big part of the American Godzilla that was so bad, beyond the Godzilla re-design was that it was a completely CGI monster. This is why I cheer when the "real" Godzilla kills the American version in Final Wars. It's an F-U in my opinion to the crazy use of CGI now days.

You said that King envisioned the Mist as a "big ole cheesy horror flick with cheesy effects"... CGI is not what I would take as cheesy effects, awful looking many times, but not cheesy. I would liked to see a more practical approach like what we see in The Thing in the dog kennel scene.

I mean Beast Master and Lord of the Rings are miles apart as far as story and production value, but when it comes down to it for me that painted tiger is right there with Mark Singer and is not some CGI ork running around on a cgi dog. CGI has it's place and it's getting better all the time, but I prefer it when its more subtle and not so out there.

Fair enough, although I'll reiterate my belief that a good story should render iffy special effects a non-issue.

Mattioli, yeah I agree when a story is really great I can let a lot of stuff slide effects and production value wise, but something with CGI really bugs me, where it just seems to take me out of the flick a bit as I'm looking at this thing thinking "that doesn't look real" as in a physical object.

My friend said he was taken out of Dawn for that exact reason. He also said that 28 Weeks Later was a better zombie movie. He obviously has no taste in film.

Also, I recently watched this with my brother. He liked the movie, but didn't like the end. Granted, he was holding his 4 month old son through the entire movie, so I think that's understandable.

I saw it in the same circumstances, and I still loved it.

REALLY late to the party on this one. Watched it for the first time yesterday and was absolutely blown away by it.

Reading through the post-release thread, I'm a little curious how some people saw the ending as simply, "Well, we're out of gas, time to end it all." There was so much more behind the decision than that. They'd driven on and on and the mist was showing no signs of ending. Drayton's wife is dead. Then they see that giant thing crossing the road. All of that was cumulative. It wasn't a snap decision, but a culmination of everything they had seen. For all they knew, the mist would never end, their old way of life was never coming back, some monster would get them eventually, so why not go out on their own terms?

Didn't know much about the original novella, so it came as no surprise when I found out Valve heavily based Half-Life on it. I could picture Gordon Freeman running around up in the mountains while all the action was going on in the grocery store.

THANK YOU! I don't see how people don't get this, either. It just baffles me. It's like they blacked out between the time the car leaves the store, and then Jane pulls the trigger. It's like they needed another hour of screentime dedicated to driving around and getting more and more depressed in order to justify the decision. I just don't get it.

Just watched this again. B&W, of course. I know this movie got great reviews and gets a ton of love around these parts, but I still feel like it is, by far, the most underrated horror film of the last decade. No one seems to talk about it that much. I feel like, 15 years from now, this will be our (well, my) generation's 'The Thing'. Or maybe I'm crazy. The film, especially in black and white, is near flawless. Damn near.

I love the concept of the ending. I was simply put off by its execution. The film was truly horrifying up until then. And then I got the giggles by the way Tom Jane kept getting pounded in the nuts with each reveal.