The Mist Review

I was like, "whatever."

It was Black Friday, and I'd gotten my Christmas shopping done by noon, so I asked my brother, who was with me, to pick a movie, my treat. I secretly wanted him to pick either "Beowulf" (not too much of a long shot) or "No Country for Old Men" (which I REALLY wanted to see, but was a huge long shot). He ended up picking "The Mist".

I was like, "whatever."

Well, it turned out that, aside from one of the bleakest, cruelest endings I can remember, it turned out to be a good choice. It was well-acted, entertaining, and probably the scariest, thrillingiest horror movie I've seen this year. Let's just ignore the fact that I haven't really seen many horror movies this year.

But can you blame me? What passes for a horror movie these days is garbage by some hot shot director that things tying a woman up to a chair and finding creative ways to torture her is scary. It's not scary. It's disgusting, but not scary. Even though you could probably tell I skipped "Saw IV" and "Hostel Part II", I'm not uniformly against the torture porn genre. I liked the original "Saw" because it had a bit of imagination. Pretty much every copycat film since then has been a slap dash mess to see who can make their audience throw up first.

That's why it's a refreshing change to see a horror movie in the hands of a good director. In the case of "The Mist", that director is Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption", "The Green Mile") once again working from Stephen King source material.

Between wondering why Darabont doesn't make more movies, I wondered why Thomas Jane isn't an A-list star yet. Here, Jane is David Drayton, a movie poster artist in a small Maine town who, along with a colorful group of locals and out of town visitors, winds up trapped in a supermarket when a mysterious and all-consuming mist envelops the town.

Doesn't sound too scary right? I mean, it's just mist, and didn't we already kinda cover this territory in "The Fog". What Darabont and King's story get right (and what most horror movies seem to ignore) is that there's nothing scarier than the ugliness of human beings when they're scared or trapped (or both). Of course, there may or may not be scary, blood-thirsty monsters out in the mist more frightening than the pissed off humans, but you know what I'm trying to say.

Jane is granite-solid as the story's everyman protagonist. Honestly, this guy is handsome, has the physique to be an action star and, hello, can act. What's the deal, Hollywood? It's not his fault "The Punisher" was garbage — it was the director's and John Travolta's. Other standouts included Toby Jones as a meek-looking, but surprisingly awesome store employee, Andre Braugher (a fantastic, underused actor) as a know-it-all out-of-towner, and Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden, as a religious nut who may be the scariest one of them all.

Seriously, Harden is terrific, alternately and easily playing scary, funny and lunatic (maybe channeling Piper Laurie in "Carrie", another Stephen King story). In John's world, she'd have a shot for an Oscar nom for "Best Supporting Actress". Then again, in John's world, "Ratatouille" would be a shoo-in for "Best Picture", but I digress.

Darabont drags out the final sequence out and then sorta screws the pooch at the end. Still, if you're looking for a solid, suspenseful, entertaining movie, with a group of interesting characters and a few laughs sprinkled in, I'd check this one out.

The Mist...B+