Note: this will contain spoilers.

I am a big fan of Frank Darabont. His first feature film, “Shawshank Redemption” (1994) was robbed of the Best Picture academy award due to the popularity and mass appeal of Forrest Gump. It is one of my favorites, and quite possibly a perfect piece. After Shawshank, Darabont penned and directed “The Green Mile” (1999). Another great movie, and surprisingly true to the Steven King novel. He followed Green Mile with “The Majestic” (2001) which was very poorly received at the box office. Despite the lackluster ticket sales, I think The Majestic is a very strong piece, and one of Jim Carrey’s better dramatic roles. And then came “The Mist” (2007).

By the time Darabont does The Mist he has become known for his great adaptations of Steven King novels and novellas. His feature debut garnered him an academy award nomination, and he followed with a strong piece as well. Somewhere between the box office failure of The Majestic and the release of The Mist, things seem to have fallen to pieces. The Mist is a sci-fi tale of monsters being unleashed on earth through a portal to another dimension, that focuses on the characters and how they react to this situation. There’s a saying in the film industry that can be paraphrased to something like, “No matter how good your talent, director, and crew, if you don’t have a good script then you don’t have shit.” This movie has a bad script.

From the opening dialog the conversation between characters seems awkward and stiff. And once into the second act (if the viewer has made it that far) it gets worse as the situations get more intense. Any movie involving monsters requires a willing suspension of disbelief, and I am more than willing to set aside any disbelief in buglike monsters from other dimensions. The problem comes when we are exposed to the characters reactions to the bugs, which at times is unbelievably illogical and impractical, we the viewers are forced out of the fantasy and into a position of critical analyses. An example of this comes early on when the lawyer character Brent Norton argues with his neighbor (and main character) David Drayton over whether there was a monster trying to get into their building. He has already been told early on that something has killed one of his fellow townsfolk “from out of the mist” and now is confronted with a missing stockboy that was pulled from the grocery store they are holed up in. Drayton offers evidence of the monster just in the next room, but Norton refuses the visual evidence insisting his neighbor (and five or so others) are trying to make him look the fool. Rather than walk to the next room and see for himself, he ends up gathering a group to go out and prove there are no monsters, never to be seen again. At times it seems like the characters were written to do dumb things so they could be killed off, thus moving the viewer through the course of the film to its end.

The highlight of the movie is Marcia Gay Harden’s portrayal of a character named Mrs. Carmody. Unfortunately the wonderful acting is overshadowed by the poorly written script. The character is used by the director as a source of conflict in the store as the group tries to decide how to battle the bugs outside. She eventually takes over most of the “hostages” with a religious zealotry that much like other parts of the story, seems contrived. This twist forces the main characters to make a run for it from the sanctuary of the store, leading us to the movies dramatic conclusion.

Maybe it was because I had two friend’s who told me how much I would love the ending, (or maybe by the end I was just numb from two hours of bad dialog) but when it came I was neither surprised nor shocked by the groups actions. In what I understand to be a variance from King’s novel where the end is left ambivalent, the final scene leaves five characters in a stalled car, in the mist, with a revolver holding four bullets. Rather than survey their situation or try to find refuge, the group decides silently to have David put them out of their miseries, leaving him to fend for himself against the bugs. The finale comes with what was supposed to be a dramatic twist, as David exits the car as the mist slowly clears only to be rescued by a roving band of US troops with tanks and flamethrowers. “Audience is left in shock realizing that he just killed three friends and his son for nothing…” I guess.

This movie has decent special effects, and a good cast of competent actors, but the cliché filled script and bad dialog leave much to be desired. If you are flipping around the TV on a Saturday night with nothing else to do, it might be worth a watch, but I would pass on paying the cost of a rental on this one.