Monday, November 26, 2007

The Mist

My wife and I went to see The Mist over the holiday. I have to say that it was a really good horror movie. There was a definite tension throughout the film as the characters lives were threatened and the bonds of "civilization" were pushed to the breaking point. There was an underlying message that when put in a situation of great fear people will do or believe almost anything to relieve themselves of the responsibility for feeling it. If they feel powerless they will attempt to reassert their power in whatever way they can. Scapegoating provides a convenient outlet for this. The terrible unknown is reduced to something familiar and identifiable.

Overall I really enjoyed this movie. Nowadays a well done horror movie seems to be a rarity. I did have a couple of problems with it. The first complaint I have was the quality of the computer generated graphics. At points they were not that great and took me out of the movie a little bit, at other points they were fine. I couldn't help but thinking they might have done better relying a bit more on animatronics and other low tech for the creatures instead of so much CG.

The bigger complaint I have is with the ending.

BIG SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

Why did they decide to kill themselves after being out of gas for 5 seconds! I mean come on! They worked so hard to survive up to that point, any normal human being is going to hold out as long as they can. I imagined myself in that situation and could easily imagine surviving for several days, and yet they decided to end it after what, maybe, 5 minutes! No, you hold out until you are either eyeing each others ribs hungrily or the monsters are about to break in.

I don't have a problem with the movie ending this way, in fact I liked it, but the context in which it happened kind of soured it for me.

* * * * * * * *

One part I liked was the beginning when you see the main character, an artist, working on the movie posters that are his livelihood. In the background is the movie poster for John Carpenter's "The Thing", a favorite movie of mine in both its version. The poster he is working on as the movie opens is obviously for Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series. HMMM . . .. perhaps a hint of things to come?

No comments: