"The Mist" - Gives a whole new meaning to bad weather

Traditionally, horror movies have almost acted as the entry-level exam for gifted filmmakers, a way to make their names before graduating to respectable material - just ask Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson. Refreshingly, with The Mist, Frank Darabont has gone the other way. Of course, he started out writing horror flicks, but this is a guy whose directorial career has largely been about conveying hope, joy, and carefully sculpted sentiment. But for his third take on Stephen King, after The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, Darabont has gone back to the well and come up with a tight, tense frightflick with more originality than a thousand Saws.

...The Mist isn’t really interested about what’s outside, trying to get in, but what’s inside, trying to get out. And by that, of course, we mean the more venal, spiteful, and downright horrifying side of human nature, personified here by Marcia Gay Harden’s religious zealot, Mrs. Carmody, dispensing frenzied rants as she cajoles her ever-growing army of followers toward one goal: blood sacrifice...

Read the full review at EmpireOnline.com