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Review: The Mist (2007)
This was not a good movie lol. Part of it is just how outdated the narrative language is in this movie. It was from 2007, but the way that the characters behaved and the story unfolded felt like this movie should've been from an even older time. The narrative decisions that were taken in telling this story were very strange and probably not what I personally would've preferred.
I'm not even sure if this would be a good movie to watch with friends because there's nothing interesting about this movie that draws attention.
Spoilers.
Story
The gist of the story was that the town was overtaken by a mist and within that mist hid a lot of monsters. A group of people were at the supermarket as the mist came, and they hid there for safety.
After a few days, the protagonist with a few allies (including his son) left the supermarket, but they couldn't get too far. They agreed to commit suicide, but there was one less bullet, so the protagonist was the one who would grave the monsters. Soon after he'd shot the others, the military passed by, transporting civilians to presumably somewhere safe.
I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on whether this was a good adaptation. However, Wikipedia does tell me that the ending of the movie was changed from the book, so I am going to consider the story of this movie as independent.
My first gripe with this movie was their decision of revealing the tentacles and the other various monsters. For a movie called the Mist, I felt that it would've been more intriguing if the monsters in the mist were not revealed, or if they were revealed much further into the movie.
When I was looking up the Mist novella on Wikipedia, it was labelled as a psychological horror movie, so my impression was that the horror was more to do with not knowing what was out there, rather than the actual monsters. So I really felt that revealing the tentacle monster so early on in the movie was a poor choice because it changed the focus of the movie from the people to the monsters.
The tropes in this movie were also laughably bad. The part of the movie when nobody believed David about the tentacle monster made me roll my eyes so hard because it dragged on for so long. When the tentacle monster took Norman (the supermarket worker), I also kept wondering why the others didn't try to close the door as soon as possible.
There were also a lot of very superficial tropes that made it really difficult for me to see the characters as characters, which I will get into below.
The writing was not great. The dialogue felt so dated and cliched and so void of any meaning. The dialogue in this movie was really more for function than to inject any personality into this movie, and it was extremely grating to have to sit through two hours of characters not saying anything meaningful to each other.
The ending did nothing for me. I get that it was "dark," because he'd killed his family and friends for nothing, but I didn't care for these characters at all, and I didn't feel heartbroken. David's cry of anguish also did not move me.
Production
This entire movie felt entirely too dated. At times, the movie felt more like a television show, with fade outs to switch between scenes.
It was hard to say there was even any room in this movie for the actors to express their characters, so I can't comment on the acting because there was no acting happening in this movie. And even when there was acting, it was so unbelievable to me.
Characters
The characters in this movie were so void of any personality. They were just stand-ins for character archetypes.
David was the hero, and he acted like it too. He was always the voice of reason, and he was always the protector of the people, the ones that others looked to for guidance. I can't say that I could describe him though. He just exhibited traits of your typical macho hero.
Billy was David's son. He was of course meant to support David's character, to show us his emotional side. I can't say that he did a lot of parenting in this movie though. Billy was mostly in the care of other women as David went around leading the pack. In the end, it surprised me that David could so easily shoot Billy, his own son, just as he did to the other folks in the car.
I was so confused by Amanda, the teacher. It really felt like the writers wanted to set her up as a love interest for David, and a surrogate mother to Billy, when David was a married man. I know that the conditions of being locked in an enclosed area will force people to create new bonds, but I just found the whole idea very odd.
Mrs. Carmody was a religious fanatic and you could say that she was the main antagonist for a part of the movie, especially as she gained followers. Like the other characters, in theory I understood her function, and I do agree that she would be able to gain followers as the situation grew more dire. But her entire character exuded no charisma. We saw from the beginning that despite being extremely devout, she was very rude to those around her, which didn't seem to make sense. So how did she gain followers? How did she connect to people in their time of need? I understand her character in theory but in practice it did not work at all.
Mr. Norton was a neighbour that David did not have a good relationship with, and he was not buying a lot of what David was selling him, thinking that David was tricking him. I thought his character was interesting, but again, his dialogue was so weak, and this is also due in part to the fact that David's dialogue was so weak. They didn't really interact with each other. They were just saying things at each other, which made their complicated relationship so hard to believe.
Ollie was a worker at the supermarket who happened to be really good with a gun. He was killed as the crew tried to escape the supermarket.
There were tons of other tropey characters too, like the town redneck, the elderly person who was tired of other people's bullshit, etc. It just felt like a very dated sitcom but with a "dark" spin on it.
Overall
I was expecting this to be a bad movie, but I didn't expect it to be this bad. I honestly can't tell how much of it is just the fact that it's outdated and how much of it is actually the movie. And I am surprised that this movie has as many accolades as it did (according to Wikipedia). So perhaps it really is just an outdated movie that doesn't suit my tastes.
I'm not even sure if this would be a good movie to watch with friends because there's nothing interesting about this movie that draws attention.
Spoilers.
Story
The gist of the story was that the town was overtaken by a mist and within that mist hid a lot of monsters. A group of people were at the supermarket as the mist came, and they hid there for safety.
After a few days, the protagonist with a few allies (including his son) left the supermarket, but they couldn't get too far. They agreed to commit suicide, but there was one less bullet, so the protagonist was the one who would grave the monsters. Soon after he'd shot the others, the military passed by, transporting civilians to presumably somewhere safe.
I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on whether this was a good adaptation. However, Wikipedia does tell me that the ending of the movie was changed from the book, so I am going to consider the story of this movie as independent.
My first gripe with this movie was their decision of revealing the tentacles and the other various monsters. For a movie called the Mist, I felt that it would've been more intriguing if the monsters in the mist were not revealed, or if they were revealed much further into the movie.
When I was looking up the Mist novella on Wikipedia, it was labelled as a psychological horror movie, so my impression was that the horror was more to do with not knowing what was out there, rather than the actual monsters. So I really felt that revealing the tentacle monster so early on in the movie was a poor choice because it changed the focus of the movie from the people to the monsters.
The tropes in this movie were also laughably bad. The part of the movie when nobody believed David about the tentacle monster made me roll my eyes so hard because it dragged on for so long. When the tentacle monster took Norman (the supermarket worker), I also kept wondering why the others didn't try to close the door as soon as possible.
There were also a lot of very superficial tropes that made it really difficult for me to see the characters as characters, which I will get into below.
The writing was not great. The dialogue felt so dated and cliched and so void of any meaning. The dialogue in this movie was really more for function than to inject any personality into this movie, and it was extremely grating to have to sit through two hours of characters not saying anything meaningful to each other.
The ending did nothing for me. I get that it was "dark," because he'd killed his family and friends for nothing, but I didn't care for these characters at all, and I didn't feel heartbroken. David's cry of anguish also did not move me.
Production
This entire movie felt entirely too dated. At times, the movie felt more like a television show, with fade outs to switch between scenes.
It was hard to say there was even any room in this movie for the actors to express their characters, so I can't comment on the acting because there was no acting happening in this movie. And even when there was acting, it was so unbelievable to me.
Characters
The characters in this movie were so void of any personality. They were just stand-ins for character archetypes.
David was the hero, and he acted like it too. He was always the voice of reason, and he was always the protector of the people, the ones that others looked to for guidance. I can't say that I could describe him though. He just exhibited traits of your typical macho hero.
Billy was David's son. He was of course meant to support David's character, to show us his emotional side. I can't say that he did a lot of parenting in this movie though. Billy was mostly in the care of other women as David went around leading the pack. In the end, it surprised me that David could so easily shoot Billy, his own son, just as he did to the other folks in the car.
I was so confused by Amanda, the teacher. It really felt like the writers wanted to set her up as a love interest for David, and a surrogate mother to Billy, when David was a married man. I know that the conditions of being locked in an enclosed area will force people to create new bonds, but I just found the whole idea very odd.
Mrs. Carmody was a religious fanatic and you could say that she was the main antagonist for a part of the movie, especially as she gained followers. Like the other characters, in theory I understood her function, and I do agree that she would be able to gain followers as the situation grew more dire. But her entire character exuded no charisma. We saw from the beginning that despite being extremely devout, she was very rude to those around her, which didn't seem to make sense. So how did she gain followers? How did she connect to people in their time of need? I understand her character in theory but in practice it did not work at all.
Mr. Norton was a neighbour that David did not have a good relationship with, and he was not buying a lot of what David was selling him, thinking that David was tricking him. I thought his character was interesting, but again, his dialogue was so weak, and this is also due in part to the fact that David's dialogue was so weak. They didn't really interact with each other. They were just saying things at each other, which made their complicated relationship so hard to believe.
Ollie was a worker at the supermarket who happened to be really good with a gun. He was killed as the crew tried to escape the supermarket.
There were tons of other tropey characters too, like the town redneck, the elderly person who was tired of other people's bullshit, etc. It just felt like a very dated sitcom but with a "dark" spin on it.
Overall
I was expecting this to be a bad movie, but I didn't expect it to be this bad. I honestly can't tell how much of it is just the fact that it's outdated and how much of it is actually the movie. And I am surprised that this movie has as many accolades as it did (according to Wikipedia). So perhaps it really is just an outdated movie that doesn't suit my tastes.