The Mist.

"Frank Darabont ditches the warm and fuzzies for out-and-out cynicism about mankind's capacity for goodness and altruism with The Mist, the filmmaker's third feature-length adaptation of a Stephen King tale," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "[E]ven if it's not entirely convincing, The Mist's damn-everyone-to-hell finale still proves a refreshing rebuke to the Capra-esque pap peddled by the director's prior The Majestic."

For the New York Times, Charles McGrath talks with King and Darabont, and writes, "The Mist, originally published as part of Mr King's Skeleton Crew collection, is early, classic King. It's not a character study like Shawshank and Green Mile; nor is it, like so many recent King novels, about the tortures of the imagination, the horrors of being a writer. It's about a small town in Maine that is one day enveloped in a mysterious, impenetrable fog that isolates many of the residents inside the local market."

Updated through 11/27.

"How did a straightforward little tale about prehistoric monsters gobbling down the hapless citizens of a modern-day town become such a lumbering and depressing movie?" wonders Chuck Wilson in the Voice. He lists several possible routes, and then: "All this would be disappointing, but not infuriating, if the film's ending weren't so unforgivably bad.... The Mis made me want to scream, but for all the wrong reasons."

"The Mist is itself a supermarket of B-movie essentials, handsomely stocked with bad science, stupid behavior, chewable lines of dialogue, religious fruitcakes, and a fine display of monsters," writes Anthony Lane in the New Yorker. "The finale - a cruel Stephen King joke - is designed to convince us that we have been watching something more than hokum, but I am unpersuaded."

Updates, 11/21: "Until the director Frank Darabont decides that he's saying something important instead of making a nifty horror movie, The Mist isn't half bad," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "In the haunting images of men and women cautiously venturing outside, their bodies melting into the mist, he offers a stronger, more palpable sense of what it means for human beings to be truly frightened than he does with any of the dialogue. He makes fear visible."

"As for that ending (very different from King's), well, it's certainly brave," writes the Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips. "It's probably braver than it is dramatically effective. But the film is absorbing, and by the time the ending arrives, you may be willing to cut it a break, as I was, even if Darabont's nervy resolution cuts the audience no break whatever."

The film "features Marcia Gay Harden as a haranguing prophet of doom so obnoxiously over-the-top that she makes Jim Jones look like Jesse Jackson," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "Harden's Mrs Carmondy would bring the whole production down if it weren't already flawed for other reasons."

"[G]ive her a break; it's not a plausible or playable role," counters Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Darabont makes the switch from middlebrow Oscar-bait to the horror genre, but the result is just as overwrought and sentimental as his previous efforts," writes Eli Goldfarb in the L Magazine.

Updates, 11/22: "The Mist is a large-scale Twilight Zone episode," writes John Constantine for Nerve. "And despite some glaring missteps, it's a decent one."

Tasha Robinson finds it to be "one of the scariest King films since Stanley Kubrick's The Shining."

Updates, 11/24: "The Mist may very well be one of the most quietly subversive movies of the year," argues Ed Champion.

Gilbert Cruz talks with King for Time.

Update, 11/26: "The Mist builds toward a climax so wrenching that I hesitate to recommend the film, but I think Darabont earns his vision," writes David Edelstein in New York. "He touches on so many sore spots: schisms of class and religion, fear of the technology's impact on the environment, fear of God's vengeance—or the vengeance of people on behalf of their gods. The movie could be called The Miasma."

Update, 11/27: "The Mist... is a blend of horror cult films such as Them! (1954) and The Fly (1958, 1986) - among many, many others - and John Carpenter's The Fog," writes Maria Komodore at Pixel Vision. "And that's exactly why it's sooo good."

Posted by dwhudson at November 20, 2007 2:06 PM