ethan_thomas (ethan_thomas) wrote in thaneros, @ 2008-04-07 09:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | reviews: films, reviews: films: snoop dogg's hood, reviews: films: the mist |
[REVIEW] The Mist / Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror
Stephen King's The Mist [2008]
Director: Frank Darabont
Studio: Genius Products (TVN)
Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 Stars
Monsters aggravate me, in the plural sense. Throw a lone vampire my way, and I'll eagerly follow his story. Small packs of werewolves have also been known to intrigue. Still, when the creatures start coming in hoards, I grow cold no matter how impressive they are or how terrifying their kills might be. Repeated exposure generates boredom not fear, and a climax that depends on something too big or too strange to be believed always leaves me thinking one thing: "Aw man! It's just a giant praying mantis!"
That bias taken into consideration, The Mist was an unavoidable, if well-acted letdown. The slow disintegration of artist and father David Drayton ensured I will look up more of Thomas Jane's acting in the future, and the return of Laurie Holden of Silent Hill fame was a treat. She, like everyone else in the film, gave a solid and compelling performance, her work hampered only by the occasional heavy handling of stereotypes in the script.
In a tale of man slipping back into savagery, stereotypes are a necessarily evil given that we must believe this could happen to the people we see every day. That said, characters that can be summed up with labels like "the dumb hick" or "the crazy bible thumper" make it impossible for viewers to connect on a deeper level. This distance further softened the horror, in my opinion, and left The Mist 3.5 out of five stars.