November 2, 2008
Not to be confused with John Carpenter's The Fog, this is a Stephen King scarefest set in a supermarket.
And it's quality stuff. Military monkeying about leads to the unleashing of a mist that engulfs a small American town. Worse still, it's created a mutant strain of mistbound malevolence that leaves shredded meat wherever it goes.
So when a group of shoppers - including Thomas Jane (The Punisher) and his son - get holed up in the local supermarket, the claustrophobic paranoia soon reveals that humans are monstrous too.
Frank Darabont (writer-director of the Oscar-nominated Shawshank Redemption) screws the tension out of every set up. Clearly shot on a budget - and playing like a Twilight Zone episode with entrails - this is a short, sharp shock of a movie.
Scary enough is the mist and its devil-like brood (apart from one dodgy cgi tentacle which is quickly forgotten). Scarier still is the fever-pitch of addled faith whipped up by a would-be woman preacher who sees this as the judgment for sin.
Set-piece scares and snappy dialogue make a potentially minor movie very watchable. The doubly devastating ending, though, is daring but divisive. A contrast with the hokey-jokey scares thus far, it tips towards a nihilism not far removed from Night of the Living Dead.
A B-movie with balls, The Mist is superior stuff. By contrast, some bigger-budget scary movies just haven't the foggiest.
And it's quality stuff. Military monkeying about leads to the unleashing of a mist that engulfs a small American town. Worse still, it's created a mutant strain of mistbound malevolence that leaves shredded meat wherever it goes.
So when a group of shoppers - including Thomas Jane (The Punisher) and his son - get holed up in the local supermarket, the claustrophobic paranoia soon reveals that humans are monstrous too.
Frank Darabont (writer-director of the Oscar-nominated Shawshank Redemption) screws the tension out of every set up. Clearly shot on a budget - and playing like a Twilight Zone episode with entrails - this is a short, sharp shock of a movie.
Scary enough is the mist and its devil-like brood (apart from one dodgy cgi tentacle which is quickly forgotten). Scarier still is the fever-pitch of addled faith whipped up by a would-be woman preacher who sees this as the judgment for sin.
Set-piece scares and snappy dialogue make a potentially minor movie very watchable. The doubly devastating ending, though, is daring but divisive. A contrast with the hokey-jokey scares thus far, it tips towards a nihilism not far removed from Night of the Living Dead.
A B-movie with balls, The Mist is superior stuff. By contrast, some bigger-budget scary movies just haven't the foggiest.