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Mist, The
MGM

Mist, The reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 58 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
5.5 out of 10
based on 29 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 161 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA 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)


GENRE(S): Horror  
WRITTEN BY: Frank Darabont  
DIRECTED BY: Frank Darabont  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: March 25, 2008 
Theatrical: November 21, 2007 
RUNNING TIME: 127 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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."
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
83
Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
In the parlance of the kids today, the movie totally goes there.
Read Full Review
80
Empire Tom Ambrose
Criminally overlooked in the States, this is one of the best horror movies of the last few years.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
75
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
At its best, The Mist just wants to make you jump.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
50
The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
Less horrific than it is horribly didactic.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
30
Village Voice Chuck Wilson
A lumbering and depressing movie.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 5.5 (out of 10) based on 161 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Dylan gave it a10:
An exemplary piece of horror filmmaking.

[Anonymous] gave it a0:
Terrible acting. Ridiculous dialogue. Bad special effects. Absurd storyline. A waste of my time.

[Anonymous] gave it a9:
While the ending sucked, I think it was at least half decent. This movie does an AMAZING job at pissing me off. I just hate the cult woman. I watched this movie after having just read "The Road" by Cormac Mcarthy (aka the most depressing book of all time). Seriously, I was practically cutting myself by the third page. And the book is about a father and son in a post-apocalyptic world. Just because of this, the movie was rather depressing for me, and the ending sucked, but it does it's job, which is to keep me entertained.

Andrew gave it a10:
I jokingly called the ending in the movie theater before it happened. Go see the movie instead of YouTube-ing the ending, it'd ruin it. Really good movie that's worth your time to watch.

[Anonymous] gave it a9:
Amazing thrill ride throughout the movie, great for scifi lovers. this isn't just a cheap scare movie, but really twisted especially in the end. I guess this is what makes king so popular. I would alter the ending so that you don't feel like shit at the end.

Steve B. gave it a10:
Excellent adaptation of the novella. I like the nods to other horror movies and the rose from the Dark Tower that it is rumored that Thomas Jane will also be in. The ending is phenomenal, a true horror classic.

Tammy R. gave it a10:
This is a great movie that i really enjoyed. Worthwhile to see it.

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