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.