Movie Review: The Mist

I heard some good things and I heard some bad things about The Mist before I saw it. So I didn't really know what to expect from this film. Now that I have seen it, I can say it was a risky effort from director Frank Darabont. In extending his tradition of using Stephen King stories, Darabont takes a step out of the box by exploring one of King's more supernatural stories. The result, well, it comes up a bit lopsided. The characters are a bit annoying throughout the entire film, and they get even more so as the movie goes on. However, all this builds up to a nice payoff. So without them being annoying then the payoff wouldn't be so great. With that said, I am not sure that it would be worth it to sit through this entire movie just for it.
Also, the visual effects of the movie looked like visual effects. For a movie that came out just last year, a lot of the effects looked a bit shiny and obvious even though these are creatures that no one has seen before.
So to wrap it up, I'll just restate what I said earlier, The Mist was a risky effort for Darabont, and the payoff, unfortunately, doesn't outweigh the rest of the movie.
2 out of 5