The Mist - Will's Review

I'm sure I've mentioned this before but I love a good base under siege story... And this is a great base under siege story.

The base is a supermarket, and the thing it's under siege from is... Well that's best left a surprise. Suffice to say that a dense fog falls on a the small Maine town that said supermarket is in, and either the fog, or somthing in the fog, is deadly.

As is always the case with bases under siege, it isn't long before the best and worst of humanity start to show, with heavy emphasis on the worst, and it isn't long before staying in the supermarket starts to look almost as bad as heading out into the fog.

Any more than that, you really are better off not knowing, so don't hit the jump until you've seen the film, or if you don't like to go in cold.
Introductions to the main players were, for my money, the perfect length; neither leaving us with so little information that we don't know enough about neighbours David and Brent, nor spending so long that we're desperate for something to happen. In fact, the whole film is very well paced, with its 4 act structure giving us a big event about every half hour.

The appearance of the fog is heralded by an air-raid siren, which made me cringe a little at first. Don't get me wrong, an air raid siren and sudden dense fog is a great audio-visual; scare it's just that it's been a great audio-visual scare back in 1999 when it became a mainstay of the Silent Hill franchise. Thankfully, it only happens the once, and is actually justifiable by context once the origin of the fog is discovered.

From seemingly supernatural beginnings, the story moves firmly into monster-movie territory, before finally taking a Lovecraftian turn, while the supermarket full of people face increasing challenges, from social breakdown as well as illness and injury, as well as the mounting threat from outside.

The ending is close to perfect, barring one small point (big spoiler, so highlight to read) There is a suicide pact, but one character can't die because they only have 4 bullets, and there are 5 people. I'm pretty sure you could kill 5 people with 4 bullets, especially when one if them is a kid; have someone hug the kid, and fire the first shot through both of their heads.

A great film, which I really enjoyed, my only issue was that the cast were almost entirely a little bit famous: not famous enough to be instantly recognisable, but enough to set you off thinking "where do I know him from" when you should be concentrating on the plot.