The Mist (2007)

The Mist. Film review. More than any film in the great year for film in 2007, The Mist is the number one film in my queue of eagerly waited DVD release. More so because for reasons even unbeknownst to me now, i had missed its theater release on the local cineplex. Ah, those insipid shitheads behind the 21cineplex managements really doesn't know the good films from their assholes. Anyways, now that its DVD has been released, i'm glad that my anticipation wasn't go in vain. This film was indeed the horror of the year. And quite probably, earned itself an entry into my shortlist of the best film in 2007.

It took only twelve minutes before somebody in ragged clothes and bloodied nose came running and screams, "There's something in the Mist!". From there on, the thrill is on. Whatever was in the Mist (or was it The Mist itself?) is hungry and as usual it seems to had a preference in human fleshes. For a majority of the film, the humans were holed up in a nearby supermarket where Nights were nightmares, and Days were even worse for not only that they had to fight whatever was in the Mist, gradually, they also had to fight among themselves. Even more so, the inner struggle between the remaining survivors were more interesting and engaging than the fight with the Mist. If i may so, this is what made this film was so effective for we could almost neglect the entity presence outside of our survivors circle and concentrating more to inner struggle betweeen our survivors. I would bet that there'd be some characters in the film that you would really hate in earnest that good conscience or no, you would wish that these characters should be the first to die which in itself presents a dilemma of wether it was them or us that is a worse human being.

In my opinion, this is how a horror film should be. Dark, and tense, and just enough of gore to keep its nature true. The film was pretty balanced throughout. When the attention was focused on the inner struggle between the survivors, it has an engaging drama and enough character performances to - like i've said earlier - made its viewers pick their side and care for their well-abouts. But when the focus was shifted to the fight between the survivors and the Mist, it doesn't shy away to showed some gores and generous - thankfully, not too sell out - amount of gore to please the hard-core horror fans. My only complain is the soundtrack. Other than that, well, re-read the last sentence of the first paragraph in this review.

Based from a novella by Stephen King, this film was written and directed by Frank Darabont. He has directed two other films that based on Stephen King's writing effort, and this film, which was a third film, strikes home again for the other two was The Green Mile - which i highly doubt that anyone who has a decent taste in film would never heard of before, and of course, one of my personal favorite film of all-time, The Shwashank Redemption. I would love to see him doing The Stand (a trilogy perhaps?). But based on what the main dude (a surprisingly decent Thomas Jane albeit a bit too tight) was drawing on the first scene of this film, we might easily came to a conclusion that Frank Darabont would did a Roland, The Gunslinger misadventure for his next project. Well, i sincerely hope so, though i personally thought that it was rather improbable. But, we'll see. All i know and i could tell is that Frank Darabont doing a Stephen King's writing effort would worth the wait.

Oh, one last thing, if you loved film, i would guarantee that you'll love the ending. Great ending. I'm not sure if the book ends the same way, but i just bought the book (Skeleton Crew) along with this film, and i couldn't wait to find out about it.