Beware: The Mist

I just went to see the Mist, directed by Frank Darabont and adapted from Stephen King's novel.

Frank Darabont makes film really slow, throughout his 20+ years of career as a director, he has only directed about 5~6 films, and most of his best ( shawshank redemption and green mile) are adapted from king's novel, and the guy himself is also nice and cool (met him once at usc and he said he makes films slow coz he doesn't want to randomly pick any project to do, but rather spend more time to focus on ones he really would love to work on), so there's no reason not to have some anticipation...

However, when The Mistcame out a couple of weeks ago here, it seems that it was doing not so good at the box office, and it even failed to break into the top 5 highest grossing of the week.

honestly, i think The Mist isn't a bad film, but on other hand, it also fails to surprise the audience. You have a lot of people trapped in a difficult situation and the dark side of human nature gradually emerges. It is nothing new at all. There are so many similar works, one old film I recently revisited, " Lifeboat" (old film by Hitchcock), does indeed share a same premise. certainly, compared with its counterparts, darabont's version of the human struggle is much more interesting, entertaining, fruitful and intense, together with the latest cg technology, you wouldn't find your time wasted for sure. but somehow, it is the director who made mesmerizing works like Shawshank and green mile, so it's probably not unreasonable for us to ask for more, right?

Anyway, I stil recommend this film to any Darabont's fan or anyone who prefer suspense and psycholgical thriller. It is well executed and the cast also perform well. I heard a lot of complaint about the ending but I do find it ok, i guess sometimes we should learn not to take happy ending for granted... it is always nice to see something different..