THE MIST (2007) - Damn nature, you scary!

Frank Darabont's The Mist is based on an original story by the one and only Stephen King, who has made it his life's goal to scare as many people shitless as possible. He has been pretty successful. Darabont, on the other hand, has been pretty successful himself in adapting King's writing into good movies. His track record is damn good too: The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. It's no surprise then, that The Mist is a great horror/thriller and one of the best adaptations of King's stuff to make it to the screen.

It could be worse... you could be trapped at Hot Topic.

The Mist is set in a small town in Maine, where self-employed artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane, from The Punisher fame) lives with his wife and son Billy. After a loud thunderstorm and an enormous tree smashes into their house, David is forced to go into town to buy some supplies and groceries. He takes his kid and his asshole lawyer neighbor with him and upon arrival to the grocery store they notice a heavy mist has fallen all over the town. While shopping and minding their own business, some raggedy old guy walks in, bleeding and screaming for everyone to get inside the store and shut the door.

Old Screaming Guy is yelling about something grabbing people off the street. Scared and confused, the customers pack inside the store and close the doors, hoping to wait it out. Problems soon appear when David and few other guys try to venture outside, and a bag boy (played by none other than the SHERMANATOR from American Pie!) gets dragged out and killed by some gnarly tentacles. Besieged by whatever the hell is waiting out there for them, the customers and staff hunker down and start arguing within themselves over their options. Even worse, a batshit crazy religious lady starts to tell everyone it is the end of days and that it's God's will that everyone die because of America's sins... uuh okay. The tension starts to build up quickly as the people inside the store start to realize that their fellow humans might just be as dangerous and cruel as the monsters waiting outside to chew their faces off. All the while, our protagonist David is just trying to make it out alive with his kid and get back home to his wife.

Horror Movie Survival 101: Stay away from giant tentacles.

The Mist suffers from some lack of believability in the actions of the characters. I know it sounds a bit dumb to criticize this in a movie about giant monster tentacles eating up people in a grocery store, but hear me out. In the beginning of the film, the asshole lawyer is confronted by Drayton and some others who saw the bag boy get dragged out by the tentacles. He refuses to believe their story, and even refuses to go into the loading dock to see the tentacle piece they had cut off with an ax. Seriously? How hard is it to walk a few yards to see the damn thing? No, instead he gets pissy and starts some rant about how the country hicks think they're better than the "out of towners." Idiot. I was really hoping he'd get killed in every scene.

The creatures themselves are original and well thought out. There's a variety of weird ass designs and they eventually start killing off humans in some grotesque form or another. The constant fog over the town makes their appearance very fast, unexpected and downright scary.

COME AT ME BRO!

This is a movie that could easily have copped out and taken an easy way out in the final few minutes. If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil what I think is one of the GREATEST endings in recent years. It is seriously shocking  - I saw The Mist for the very first time to write this review and I had no idea about the ending. You really owe it to yourself to see the stuff Frank Darabont was ballsy enough to pull off screen and get away with in an era of Michael Bay OMGWTF 3D extravaganza blockbusters and constant remakes.

TL;DR - trapped inside a store by mysterious monsters outside and religious nuts inside - 8.5/10