Frank Darabont
The Mist

Frank Darabont and Stephen King.  

Two names that work great together: good old Frank is one of the few who successfully managed to bring King's literary works to the big screen, with the two Oscar-nominated films "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile." Well, good old Frank tries again with this "The Mist" based on the homonymous story (written in 1976) by the writer from Maine and, let's say it right away, it's another hit. Not only the best horror of the season (only Cloverfield is on par), "The Mist" is one of the most successful horrors of recent years.

The plot is a backdrop, a pretext. A small lake town in Maine, the morning after a violent storm, is engulfed by a thick and sinister mist coming down from the mountains. Dave Drayton, having gone to town with his son to buy materials to repair the damage to his house, finds himself trapped in the supermarket along with a large group of fellow citizens: something strange lurks in the mist, and when a man rushes in covered in blood, they decide to stay locked inside. But the Lovecraftian creatures brought by the mist are merely a means to explore the human psyche under extreme conditions: the initial solidarity pervading the group quickly gives way to selfish, violent, and manipulative behaviors that reveal hidden old grudges among the townspeople that inevitably come to the surface. The microcosm of the supermarket is, in a way, a small mirror of contemporary American society: among people who still exhibit certain values (particularly the older characters), there's the schoolteacher who keeps a gun in her purse ("It's my husband's idea..."), the successful lawyer (who shows a certain paranoia towards Dave, his neighbor, guilty of winning a lawsuit against him), and the religious fanatic, who will easily form new followers thanks to the unreal situation in which the group is involved.

Everything works well thanks to the good (and in some cases excellent) performances of the actors, with well-defined characters and excellent dialogues, sprinkled here and there with a certain sense of humor.
In a way, "The Mist" works more as a "psychological" film than as a true horror, but don't be fooled: although the premiere of the co-starring monsters is not entirely convincing, with special effects sometimes just so-so (but generally quite good, don't worry), and a first half-hour that struggles to take off, things then change noticeably, and the viewer can’t help but be drawn in by a tension that grows almost unbearably among the interactions between the survivors, now split into two groups (the "religious" and the non-religious), and some pure horror sequences that will keep you glued to your seat.

The film completely changes in the second half and brings to light, under its sci-fi-horror aesthetics, delicate themes such as religion, fanaticism, science, and human action on Nature (the true cause of the mist, apparently), which could undermine the work if treated in a trivial and superficial manner, something that doesn't happen but instead offers more or less interesting insights. The whole is then sealed with a masterful final part, orchestrated impeccably by the haunting track "The Host of Seraphim" by Dead Can Dance (the only piece of the practically absent soundtrack), offering some of the most apocalyptic sequences ever seen (the entrance of the enormous creature at the end being absolutely visionary) and finally a conclusion that will likely make many cringe due to its cruelty, but it shows, not even subtly, the extreme point where the difference between madness and rationality disappears, allowing man to commit the most tragic (and incomprehensible, in other situations) of actions, and it is quite simply the icing on the cake for a great film.