Being an experienced film-connoisseur (read: movie junkie), I have seen my share of good films and bad films, as well as films that inflict mortal wounds in organs that somehow never heal. This film, however, was not such a film. I went with the expectation of another cookie-cutter Hollywood horror in which the killer(s) are eventually beaten and their evil plan foiled. These films usually also include comedy-relief characters that end up either dieing or surviving with a rather painful-looking severed limb. These horror movies (read: garbage) are usually produced for about $70 million as they need to pay the A-grade actors to simply appear. However, I was very surprised by The Mist to have none of these stereotypical elements.

The film started off not with some high school-esque party where the killer is introduced, but rather with images of a simple North American town where people are generally pleasant and bearable. Each character is your typical neighbor with their own small-town problems. A preceding storm had damaged much of the lake-side homes and forced two polarized characters - quite literally, one white (Thomas Jane of Dream Catcher) and one black (Andre Braugher of Frequency) - to overlook their differences in order to civilly solve the insurance matters in damages taken during the storm, a storm that foreshadows the coming events. No guns were used, no street slang, and no other teenage garbage.

The visual setting of the town, although I am not 100% sure of its location, however I believe it is in Portland, shows the small-town mentality that scares me to death. Every citizen knows everything about everybody. No one but tourists are strangers. And the most disturbing reflection of present-day America is the use of the ultra-fascist Christian loner, Mrs. Carmody. That is a name I shall never forget. Just as Ed Exley had Rollo Tomasi in LA Confidential, I have Mrs. Carmody to scare the everliving bejesus out of me. Her character having an odd similarity to todays right wing pro-war Christians, she brings much controversy in the scope of reason, sanity, and rationality. Although her character is quite literally insane, the group she eventually leads believes her to be the messiah, having some telepathic understanding with the beasts to come. But that's getting ahead of myself.

Upon the descent of the mist from the overlooking mountain military base, a local runs into the supermarket where our anti-hero, David Drayton (Jane), and his neighbor Brent Norton (Braugher) attempt an embarrassingly awkward acquaintanceship in retrieving supplies. This local warns the supermarket of the impending doom and his foggy witness of the creatures in the mist. When the mist comes closer and some less than intelligent local attempts to get to his car, whereupon he is assuringly eaten by a creature, the huddled mass within the supermarket are terrified into belief.

From here the film takes the direction of pitting two sides against each other. Those that believe that the military had an accident and caused the mix of two dimensional worlds, in which the creatures enter our world by way of the mist; and those that believe that the world is coming to an end and the only person that can save them is the psychopathic Mrs. Carmody. Both sides continue to struggle for majority power by recruiting the huddled masses, but as the creatures attack the obvious panic forces them into a state of pure fear and stupidity. As the famous saying by Tommy Lee Jones in MIB goes: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

Although one can easily put themselves in the place of the huddled mass in such a situation, it would be very difficult to side with the crazy woman. The question always comes down to, what would you do in the same situation? I know I wouldn't be a model hero, but I definitely wouldn't attempt to perform human sacrifice to please the mist monsters. What would you do?

Focusing on the creatures, very little is actually seen of them, which definitely adds to the effect. The few that are seen are insect-like creatures, more so mosquito than anything else, which sting a victim and cause suffocation due to an adverse reaction to the poison. However, these are the prey for a much larger creature: a pterodactyl-like monster the size of a child that also preys on the humans. The next type of monster is the spider, which instead of spinning a simple web, uses a strand of highly acidic webbing to "disable" (read: melt) its victim. From here, it is left up to the imagination what the monsters really look like in high detail. A large crab-like creature that snaps up people and consumes them and an enormous Titanic-sized creature that seems to be pretty docile, much like a very huge elephant. The mist itself acts as a tool to hide these creatures so that we're forced to assume the worst, instead of the typical pop-out-and-scare-you monsters in the Hollywood trash bin.

I was quite impressed with the film. Without giving away the ending, I was afraid that Hollywood hubris would ruin it just as it had ruined many a good film. Much like the third Terminator installment, although not a masterpiece in any way, the ending refuses to abide by the desires of the audience. In that film, it was expected that John Connor and his lady sidekick would save the world and stop Skynet and the protecting terminator would survive. However, the film ended with the demise of the planet. This ending infuriated many people simply because it went against convention, although it is not new to this. The Mist did this in its own way and presented a masterful ending with an amazing soundtrack to add effect. The ending will infuriate you. It will make you sad or annoyed or whatever. But most of all, it will make you think. What would you do in that situation?