Thursday, May 08, 2008
I Can’t Believe I Watched the Whole Thing: Stephen King’s The Mist
Stephen King’s The Mist is hideously bad. From its derivative, overblown script to its utterly cartoonish social and political commentary, from its monumentally bad special effects to its uneven acting, and all the way to the overly telegraphed and monstrously twisted ending, it embodies all that is bad about King’s movies and books. It is ham-handed and ugly with a simplistic view of our nation’s political and cultural differences; its characters are drawn obscenely from pure stereotype with not an ounce of sympathy for the depth of real folks; it’s dialog is tedious; its thrills are killed by the sheer unbelievability of the scary creatures and the stupidity of the plot; and its soundtrack (especially near the end) works hard to infuse emotion into a laughably contrived film.
What the hell was I thinking? I really should have known better and if I had seen it in a theater I would be pissed. Hell, I just rented it for $4.99 on pay-per-view and I’m pretty damn cranky.
Comments & Trackbacks
Is it better, or worse, than “The People Under the Stairs”? That’s my bad movie barometer.
You know, when you get a review like that from somebody that admits to liking Will Farrell and Adam Sandler, that’s pretty damning.
8-)
Interestingly, I thought it was one of his better stories.
Spoiler alert (necessary for a crappy movie?):
Instead of everyone dying, the main characters mostly make it out alive, and with some hope.
It was a nice change from many of the other horror stories I couldn’t stop myself from reading in my teens.
Also, The Raft was the scariest story I’ve ever read. It gave me nightmares on 3 separate occasions.
And then Salem’s Lot is (in my opinion) his only good novel.
But that’s just my opinion. Read those three, and you’ve read all you really need to of Stephen King.
Carin, that’s a pretty low bar to navigate. No, it’s not that bad--but, damnit, it tries.
C’mon, Doug, admit your secret love for Adam Sandler. The love that dares not speak its name.
Nathan, I almost want you to watch it just so you can tell me how the movie ending compares to the book ending. I’m thinking that it’s significantly different--and I’m guessing that some of the dialog would irritate you as much as it did me.
For the record, I’m not a big fan of horror literature as a genre, I’m even less of a fan of Stephen King. I’ve never tried any of his short stories, but every book I tried to read left me pretty cold--with the exception of Salem’s Lot, which I loved.
Let’s put it this way:
I like Forest Gump, I love Red Dawn, I even like The Truth About Cats and Dogs. I listen to Abba, Neil Diamond, and Peter, Paul and Mary. I think I can say with some confidence that I’m not afraid to admit to guilty pleasures.
Adam Sandler only qualifies for the “guilty” part.
Completely unrelated (but since I am not blogging anymore):
Am I the only one who finds it odd (sickeningly so) that we would willingly invade a sovereign nation when most of the world was against the idea (I supported it), yet now this Administration refuses to even consider airdrops of basic supplies and foodstuffs to help a dying people because the junta that rules Burma says we can’t?
I quit blogging and suddenly there’s a whole bunch of stupid in the news. Ain’t it always the way?
I’ve left my response in a new post. Feel free to respond in kind--and, you know, you haven’t actually been locked out of your own blogging software. If you want to write, all you have to do is decide to do so.
No, because then I might do it more than once.
I did however just upgrade to 2.5 to see if stops the spam URL injection exploit.