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Mist, The

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Mist, The reviews
58
5.8 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 29 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 180 votes
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Horror

Written by: Frank Darabont

Directed by: Frank Darabont

Release Date:
Theatrical: November 21, 2007
DVD: March 25, 2008

Running Time: 127 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: R for violence, terror and gore, and language

Starring Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Andre Braugher, Laurie Holden, Toby Jones, William Sadler, Frances Sternhagen, and Jeffrey DeMunn

David Drayton and his young son Billy are among a large group of terrified townspeople trapped in a local grocery store by a strange, otherworldly mist. David is the first to realize that there are “things” lurking in the mist…deadly, horrifying things…creatures not of this world. Survival depends on everybody in the store pulling together…but is that possible, given human nature? As reason crumbles in the face of fear and panic, David begins to wonder what terrifies him more: the monsters in the mist—or the ones “inside” the store, the human kind, the people that until now had been his friends and neighbors? (The Weinstein Company)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

88

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Good and creepy, The Mist comes from a Stephen King novella and is more the shape, size and quality of the recent “1408,” likewise taken from a King story, than anything in the persistently fashionable charnel house inhabited by the “Saw” and “Hostel” franchises.

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88

ReelViews James Berardinelli

What a horror film SHOULD be - dark, tense, and punctuated by just enough gore to keep the viewer's flinch reflex intact.

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83

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

What is surprising is how he (Darabont) rebounds from his weak, awkwardly compressed opening to produce one of the scariest King films since Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."

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83

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

There's a grim modern parable to be read into the dangerous effects of the gospel-preaching local crazy lady Mrs. Carmody (brilliantly played by a hellfire Marcia Gay Harden) on a congregation of the fearful.

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83

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

In the parlance of the kids today, the movie totally goes there.

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80

Empire Tom Ambrose

Criminally overlooked in the States, this is one of the best horror movies of the last few years.

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80

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

I think this one of the first King movies to legitimately give me the creeps.

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75

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

While it's riveting throughout, The Mist is a bit bloated.

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75

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

At its best, The Mist just wants to make you jump.

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75

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's a B-movie with A-list aspirations, and it's at its best when it's not trying to be something it isn't.

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70

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Darabont doesn't match the sly cultural commentary of "The Host," a recent Korean import that also revamped the giant-monster genre, but his grocery-store survival drama, dominated by Marcia Gay Harden as a shrill fundamentalist, serves as a crude but effective allegory for post-9/11 America.

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67

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Andy Spletzer

The scenes that really work are the ones that take place outside the supermarket, in the beginning and at the end of the film. In fact, the "Twilight Zone"-inspired ending nearly makes up for all that comes before.

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67

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Unlike King, Darabont ends this story with a drop kick to the cerebellum, a change from the original that shocks the viewer and leave little doubt that Darabont thinks we're all headed to hell in a hand basket.

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63

USA Today Claudia Puig

More thought-provoking than frightening. Its stubbornly cynical attitude makes it worth watching, more than the monsters or the impenetrable mist (which looks spewed from a fog machine) engulfing a small town in Maine.

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63

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The movie has a monster problem -- the more you see of them, the less scary they are -- most of the characters are standard-issue types, and Harden seriously overdoes the pious psycho bit.

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63

Premiere Eric Alt

This one aims for bleak and hits it.

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60

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

More political allegory than horror movie.

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60

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The Mist is itself a supermarket of B-movie essentials, handsomely stocked with bad science, stupid behavior, chewable lines of dialogue, religious fruitcakes, and a fine display of monsters.

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50

Variety Justin Chang

Much nastier and less genteel than his best-known Stephen King adaptations ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile"), Frank Darabont's screw-loose doomsday thriller works better as a gross-out B-movie than as a psychological portrait of mankind under siege, marred by one-note characterizations and a tone that veers wildly between snarky and hysterical.

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50

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Less horrific than it is horribly didactic.

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50

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

If you have seen ads or trailers suggesting that horrible things pounce on people, and they make you think you want to see this movie, you will be correct. It is a competently made Horrible Things Pouncing on People Movie. If you think Frank Darabont has equaled the "Shawshank" and "Green Mile" track record, you will be sadly mistaken.

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50

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Until the director Frank Darabont decides that he’s saying something important instead of making a nifty horror movie, The Mist isn’t half bad.

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50

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The brutally ironic ending, I might add, won't make anybody very happy about having chosen The Mist for their evening's entertainment.

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50

New York Post Kyle Smith

A pretentious left-wing monster movie with about 15 minutes of alarming creatures and a whole lot of bickering, is a pre-9/11 story which Stephen King wrote eons ago. It operates in the post-9/11 era about as well as a Studebaker at the Daytona 500.

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50

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The Mist contains nary a dollop of wit and irony. As adapted and directed by Frank Darabont, there's no ambiguity either.

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50

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The Mist doesn't provoke further thought; it provokes active annoyance at being punished in the service of a pulp morality tale with pretensions.

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50

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

I wouldn't say this is laugh-out-loud risible, but there are definitely moments. Still, you might want to consider sitting through the uneven thing just to get to the ending, because that's quite something. You may love it, you may hate it, but forget it you won't.

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40

New York Magazine David Edelstein

A derivative horror picture that somehow rises to the level of a primal scream. The premise is simple, by which I mean both easy to understand and feeble-minded.

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30

Village Voice Chuck Wilson

A lumbering and depressing movie.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 5.8 (out of 10) based on 180 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Ricky M. gave it an8:
The ending is black but the film up til then is great harrowing and breathtakingly scary.

Robert S gave it a9:
I love a horror film that goes for the bleak and the depressing - this is the horror genre folks, why on Earth would I want a 'happy ending' to all that has gone before? Keep your ludicrous 'Sorority Row', 'Friday the 13th' and 'Saw' claptrap and give me a group of people riven by mistrust, fear of 'what's out there' and attempting to exert their influence over others. That's horror - not the monsters (and the effects are not that bad for a film that had a pretty low budget), not the short term visceral satisfaction of arterial spray that most of us are desensitized to know anyway or the B movie trimmimngs that Darabont provides along the way. The confrontations between the people in the store is far more engaging and suspenseful, and even if the film doesn't quite make the points it wants to (although it mostly manages) it at least attempts to have some meat and bones to it. Which is more than can be said for other so-called horrors of late. For my money, one of the more memorable horror films of the last couple of years and one that I frequently recommend to others.

zac h gave it an8:
This was a good movie. But be warned the ending i liked but if you hate unhappy endings don't watch.

Andrew L gave it a10:
Once again i was almost fooled by the critics, the movie was brilliant. its actually very hardcore, not in a violent sense, although it is quite graphic. for a modern horror movie im surprised how little it makes you jump, this was a good thing, it didnt need cheap scare tactics to totally creep you out, it does it through the people in the mall and how they react to the situation. the movie really was great, scary, fun, intense, suspenseful, really just a great horror flick. the Ending, by far, is one of the most powerful pieces of cinema ive seen, ever.

James A. gave it an8:
Some people will think that this movie does little to set it apart in any commendable way; I think it does just that in remarkable ways. First, let me start off by telling you what you won't see in this movie that you see in so many others nowadays. You won't see wasteful, unrealistic, over the top action thrown in just for over the top action's sake. You won't see recycled plot elements; there's no "Classical Hero's Journey" structure; there's no awkward, misplaced romances that punctuate the plot. You won't see bad acting or cheesy dialogue, nor will you see poor pacing. The movie's pacing is so that it emphasizes suspense, uncertainty, and the characters. The characters themselves are very well delivered, and you'll find yourself relating to them before things even go totally awry. The cast is top notch. The dialogue is believable and not trimmed down to the point where the characters seem less like people, and more like just a role in a plot. The plot itself comes with at least a couple twists, they won't throw you for a loop, but at least one (and I'm not giving anything away here) is so brutal, cruel, and unforgiving that it alone sets the movie apart from the status quo, and had me outright clapping for the guts it took. Now what don't I like about the movie? The central antagonist(s) in this movie is enigmatic and centers around the mist that has swept through the town in question. In this mist are other wordly beasts that are the center for very much terror. For the better part, most of these monsters are bland. They come with a lot of detail and are mostly well rendered, but most of them just don't seem imaginatively done enough to fill the plot role that they were given. That's not really important for the story though. Another negative is the source eventually suggested for these apocalyptic happenings. The source isn't necessarily believable given current scientific theory, but it's delivered in such a way that it's not set in stone, and still leaves the audience for the most part to make their own decision. A closing pitfall that the movie falls into is that it perhaps tries a little too hard to make political and religious commentary on humanity's nature, but without really accomplishing anything in its efforts that hadn't been heard before. Those elements were necessary in moving the story along and providing a powerful secondary conflict within the plot, but it just didn't do as much as it seemed that it was trying to, and it did try hard. I've mulled over this movie for hours, and those are the only three detracting drawbacks that I can really muster that wouldn't be unfair to the film. It's written well; it's acted well; it disregards a lot of stigmas, and it has a remarkably, brutal twist that will wrench your emotions to the core. In the horror department, it's suspenseful, not overly gory, although not entirely scary. It has its startle-moments, which'll play off of your jumping reflex, but it really hinges more on discomfort of the unknown, and on a deeply sorrowful unease.

k s gave it a10:
Excellent monster movie, in which not the monsters are the thread, the ordinary people are. The Ending is one of the best in horror movie history.

Andre M gave it a3:
I thought that it would be some kind of psycologic thriller, what would be a lot more interesting. However, the movie has some really boring alien bugs, just as in any other B class movie. That took a lot of the movie credibility away. Through the movie, there were some interesting parts, some funny and some very intense. But some (most of) the persons were extremely dumb, by taking too long to decide to do something. And finnaly, the end was very, very sad, not bad, really, it was probably the most well thought part of the movie, but very sad. If it was with me, I would wait for the bugs come, not suicide so early.

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