Movie Review: The Mist

Yesterday I managed to get hold of The Mist on DVD. I have to say that this was one of the best movies I've ever seen. The Mist is a movie adaptation of Stephen King's novel with the same title and it was directed by Frank Darabont. This isn't the first time that Frank directed a Stephen King movie; many of you might recall The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both of which are in my top-ten list of favorite movies. Frank Darabont did an excellent job with The Mist...it couldn't have been any better!
I've identified Frank Darabont's variable list that are included in most of his movies:

• Create characters which the audience can identify with
• Make the audience love the good characters (the good guys I mean)
• Make the audience really hate the bad characters
  
• Be ruthlessly cruel with these characters (both the good as well as the bad characters)

With The Mist, Frank Darabont touched all the above points, particularly the first and the last one. Frank's aim is to make you feel as many emotions as possible. While watching this movie I felt these emotions (strictly in the following order):

1. Helplessness
2. Despair
3. Fear
4. Deep seething rage
5. Joyful contempt
6. Fear
7. Joy
   
8. Total helplessness
   
9. Heart-wrenching sadness
10. Shock
11. Sorrow

If you don't feel at least four of the above emotions while watching The Mist, you might try visiting your GP to see if you're really human. I need to point out that I HATED the ending, a big shocker, yes, but it was so very sad and so unfair I couldn't think straight for the rest of the day.
There is a back-story to the whole thing, mostly dealing with monsters in the mist but the movie is so smart and so character driven that you hardly pay any attention to it. Basically the story revolves around a group of people who become trapped together when an unnatural mist surrounds the grocery store they're in. Soon they realize that there are lurking dangers in the mist and anyone trying to escape dies a horrible death. However the dangers inside the grocery store far surmounts the dangers outside and we get to see how fear and crazy-talk can make people do unspeakable things to each other (think: Jews being killed in concentration camps, suicide bombers, holy wars, witch-hunts etc). This movie highlights the dangers of Faith and why a society should never base their values on what's written in archaic books or the ramblings of power-thirsty, attention-seeking dictators: rules+irrationality=disasters.
Frank Darabont created the best on-screen villains ever: Mrs Carmody. I am a very peace-loving person who opposes any kind of violence, but seriously, if I was one of the people in that grocery store I would have enjoyed torturing her ass off. I hated her so much, she was so evil and I just loved hating her every time she opened her mouth.
This movie is a must see (though if you're a religious republican you're gonna hate it, trust me), and even though the ending is 100% not cool, I guess Frank used it to draw any remnants of unsurfaced emotions from the viewer, and with that, he receives a big A+ for meeting his goal.