“He’s right. As a species we’re fundamentally insane.”

I want to get to my Mamma Mia! review so this might end up a bit short and sparse lol. I didn’t know a lot about this movie, had never read the Stephen King novella, and I guess the best way to begin here is to say: if the critics of The Happening were so negative because they were coming straight off the back of seeing this, then, I guess I can understand where they were coming from. If it’s fear, nightmare, social commentary and sheer hopelessness you were looking for, then The Mist is absolutely the movie to plump for.

Like The Happening, this is clearly not without its influences – in fact, if anything they’re only more obvious. The Fog is clearly there; that the movie restrains itself to the confines of a mall only a few minutes in immediately recalls Dawn of the Dead. But from there onward – I really can’t detail it because of the joy I got from not knowing what was coming – it’s really quite on its own.

Anyway, I’ve been a little lax in my movie watching of late due to the overwhelming distraction of TV and Second Life – I haven’t even felt comfortable in watching movies in “background mode” ‘cos my attention’s so much in the virtual world, lol. So I guess it’s high praise for me to say that I couldn’t take my eyes and ears off this one. The business of the opening scenes is superbly handled by Darabont introducing us to all the different characters we’ll be stuck with for the next two hours. When the weird happenings start happening, I was far more unsettled than I was by The Happening. And when the, uh, “other stuff” started happening later on … I really didn’t know whether to laugh or hide, and I did plenty of both.

A lot of people have talked about the ending and how down and unpredictable it is. I have to say, I didn’t find it so much surprising as it was inevitable. You kinda know what’s gonna emerge from the mist when that time comes following the incident everyone’s so shocked by. But that second vehicle that passes … that’s the one that really killed me. It’s still a cornier ending than I expected, rather like that “alternate ending” of the man with the X-Ray eyes when he plucks his eyes out and yells, “OH MY GOD, I can still SEE!” lol … but it’s still handled superbly by Darabont. It’s definitely Halloween viewing, that’s for sure.