With Best Picture Oscar nominations for his first two directorial efforts, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, one would expect Frank Darabont to do something pretty spectacular with his latest Stephen King adaptation, The Mist. Unfortunately, one would be disappointed. The Mist is another in a long line of King adaptations that don't live up to the hype of the author's reputation. In Darabont's defence, he didn't really have material equal in atmosphere and legend to his first two outings. As a "there's-something-out-there" movie, though, The Mist does work. A group of people are in a small-town supermarket following a violent storm when a heavy mist envelops the town. And as one character with a bloody nose screams as he enters the story, "There's something in the mist!" There is something in it, indeed, but we never truly find out what. Between the paroxysms of gore - people eaten in half by snaking tentacles and giant insects - there are long interludes during which the 1950s-style characters endemic to King's literature are introduced. There are the indigenous hicks resentful of the brainy outsiders (especially New Yorkers), a religious zealot played by Marcia Gay Harden, the vulnerable elderly and even a couple of African Americans whose occasional bitterness hints at racial tension. And then there is the secretive military compound just outside of town that, in the end, is responsible for the things in the mist. This is 1950s B-movie all the way, cardboard characters and all. But as long as you're not expecting anything on par with Darabont's earlier adaptations, have fun.
