Product Description

A mysterious mist, thick with blood-thirsty creatures, descends on a small town, where a group of people holes up in a grocery store to fight for their lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #874 in DVD
• Brand: WELLSPRING/GENIUS
• Released on: 2008-03-25
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Formats: Color, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 126 minutes

Amazon.com
Writer-director Frank Darabont, who showcased the softer side of Stephen King in his film adaptations of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, turns to darker material for The Mist, his latest King adaptation about a group of ordinary townspeople trapped in a supermarket by a mysterious fogbank. Thomas Jane is top-billed as a Maine illustrator who attempts to calm the frightened shoppers, but his job is cut out for him from the get-go, first by the discovery of malevolent creatures lurking in the mist, and then by the mad mutterings of Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), a local eccentric who calls for Old Testament-style sacrifices to appease the supernatural forces. Darabont delivers monster movie thrills and understated social commentary with equal skill, and he's well supported by his cast (which includes Andre Braugher, Toby Jones, William Sadler and Jeffrey DeMunn) and the vivid special effects by KNB EFX, which effectively mix CGI with models and stop-motion animation (the terrific monsters were designed by legendary comic book artist Bernie Wrightson). And for those curious about how the novella's downbeat ending has translated to film, suffice it to say that Darabont's conclusion is at once different and more unsettling than King's. --Paul Gaita

Customer Reviews

Not bad movie, but disturbing...
Not the best movie. Could have been a little shorter, and has a disturbing ending that is not for the weak or sensitive. Not actually too bad otherwise, but the ending is still bothering me the next day...

One of the worst movies I've ever seen
This movie was terrible. I wasn't even mid-way through the show when I started to realize this flick just wasn't going to get any better.

The dialogue was bad. The characters were annoying. The effects . . . laughable. Seriously, I started cracking up during that tentacle scene because it reminded me so much of those old movies where the actual creature is never shown but you always get a glimpse of a piece of its body. And then the scenes in the movie that did fully show other creatures looked like scenes that were rip-offs from Aliens, Arachnophobia, War of the Worlds, and Eight Legged Freaks.

And that bible toting, end of days preaching, Jim Jones wannabe character was soo grating on the nerves it was like sitting for almost two hours listening to someone drag their nails across a chalk board.

As for the ending, it simply left much to be desired. It wasn't merely bad because it ended on an unhappy note. I have seen movies that ended tragically but it fit perfectly for that movie. This ending was out of left field and just left me with the feeling of 'what the . . . where did they come up with that idea?'

This was truly one of the worst horror movies I have ever seen and I could never recommend it to anyone.

Doublebind
This is of course not your standard dumb monster horror flick, not with a King novella as material and Darabont doing the movie. But it is also not quite satisfactory.
There is too much being in two minds going on here! Just look at the reviews, so many of them: so many are absolutely enchanted, so many others are totally put off. That must mean something.
The reviewers' split mirrors quite appropriately the film's own schizophrenia: it is about important issues of the American society of today, about its separation in camps, about the split of modern and scientific rationalism versus the spirit of biblical literalism. Pragmatism versus Old Testament is the main message. But the plot is based on the horror vision of science gone wrong, of monsters born out of the hubris of military scientists.
How can one get disentangled from that spiderweb? One can't easily, and the ending has a nice touch of futility. Don't get too logical about the ending, many will be frustrated by it, one can even argue that it is not logical, but it is certainly a powerful message.
Before watching the film, I knew little about it and somehow hoped that it would be creative with using mist for horror. Then the fact that the mist is actually just hiding monsters came as a bit of disappointment, it somehow cheapened the film. On the other hand, the monsters are quite good, with a distinct Boschian quality. Finally, the main monster is of course good old M.G.Harden who preaches the fear of an apocalyptic kind of god very effectively. Sort of a Lady of the Flies.