The Mist

Review

Your reaction to The Mist will either be, “Oooh, scary,” or “Wow, cheesy,” but it’s hard to laugh off the thunderous rattling of the market’s huge windows or the eeriness of the silence that follows. The attacks of the sundry creatures are shot and edited with blistering intensity; they have a fury that’s biblical. The director, Frank Darabont, steals a lot of Steven Spielberg’s tropes—the key image of people (or things) melting into and out of the mist is right out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But Spielberg, by comparison, is a cockeyed optimist. Even his War of the Worlds suggests that a fierce commitment to family will help humanity survive an alien onslaught. The Mist is not so sanguine. The idea of a bunch of disparate people trapped in an enclosed space is a wheezy horror staple, but the actors are first-rate—among them Andre Braugher as a suspicious city lawyer, Laurie Holden as the new teacher in town who thinks people are basically good, and Toby Jones as the assistant store manager who thinks they’re basically bat-shit. Looming over all is Marcia Gay Harden as the town’s religious fanatic. The threats are from without and within. The Mist builds toward a climax so wrenching that I hesitate to recommend the film, but I think Darabont earns his vision. He touches on so many sore spots: schisms of class and religion, fear of the technology’s impact on the environment, fear of God’s vengeance—or the vengeance of people on behalf of their gods. The movie could be called The Miasma. — David Edelstein

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New York Magazine Reviews

• David Edelstein's Full Review (12/3/07)