Stephen King's The Mist Critic Reviews

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

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 the full review

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 the full review

While it's riveting throughout, The Mist is a bit bloated.Read the full review

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 the full review

More political allegory than horror movie.Read the full review

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

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 the full review

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 the full review