23.11.07

The Mist aka How NOT to Make a Movie

How do you make a movie like The Mist? You think you are really smart, your audience is really dumb and you get some dry ice.

To say I hated The Mist is not true.

There are no words for the magnitude of hatred that movie has stirred up in me. I am literally physically agitated as I type this because of how bad this movie was. I don't even like to say the name of the film and I left the theatre less than an hour ago.

The last movie I violently hated was League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and praise be to God that most of that film has been extinguished from my head. I can only pray that time will do the same to the past two hours I spent in the theatre.

Going into The Mist I knew it had gotten bad reviews, but I thought there were two options: 1) the reviewers didn't get the movie and it might actually be a diamond in the rough or 2) it would at least be entertainingly bad. I was wrong on both counts.

Never before have I had to stop myself from screaming "How dumb are you people!" at the screen. And I have seen some crap not worthy to have the film stock melted down into guitar picks.

The wost part is I think everyone involved with the film thought that by comitting so wholly to the concept they were actually making something good. However, this film was so telegraphed that a blind & deaf man could have saw his way to the next plot point.

There's giant monsters outside and oh my gosh, we've baracaded ourselves inside a store that has one entire side made out of glass! What if the monsters get in! There's a religious fnantic that thinks God's wrath is upon us! Is she crazy or is she right? There's a military base in town and the rumors are that they conduct top secret research there, what if they have something to do with the mist??? Oh gee, people are dying and more are going to die if they listen to the crazy religious wacko! They're going to start turning on each other and the wacko is going to develop a god-complex.

Of the many terrible scenes in the movie a few stand out. First when a character commits suicide the "sane" characters in the film band together and paint the verbal poster of the film. They actually discuss the fact that when people are scared they do stupid things, and the religious wacko is getting more and more followers and they'll do anything she says, and we can die here or die trying to escape...on and on. They rant about the political system too and how it's created because of fear. Uh huh, that's how subtly they hint at the fact that this horror film is also a ploitical commentary.

Then there's a scene where a few brave souls venture into the pharmacy next door. As they enter they realize the door was unlocked and phew no giant man-eating bugs got in here, we're just going to pretend the enormous spider webs covering everything are left over Halloween decorations or something. And oh, they also meet a nearly-dead MP who is alive enough to tell them that he's sorry and this is all their fault right before he dies of spider-related causes.

Technically, I couldn't even enjoy Frank Darabont, the way the film was shot or even the score.

The direction was horifically poor, Darabont was trying to be "gritty" and raw but he obviously sucks at it and thought that framing his shots dirtily would help that feeling. Not to mention the script. This is the kind of script you expect if you hand a short story to a bunch of tenth grade english students. Then finally, the film was nearly devoid of music until the las act when our "heroes" escape and suddenly this Enya-esque music kicks in for the remainder of the film.

By the way, I truly laughed a loud when five minutes before the movie ended the car they were escaping in ran out of gas - the movie ran out of gas a long time ago.

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