King and Darabont’s latest collaboration is a flawed but entertaining monster movie.

Apparently, Stephen King is absolutely thrilled with Frank Darabont’s latest adaptation of his writing (Darabont previously directed Shawshank Redemption and Green Mile, both based on King material). King has gone as far as to praise the new Darabont-written ending of the film stating: "Frank wrote a new ending that I loved. It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last 5 minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead."

For this viewer, the lousy ending is the only thing keeping The Mist from being a purely entertaining monster movie. It’s the head-scratching overblown moment that nearly ruins the entire two hours of film that comes before it. Of course, it’s not too surprising that King sees things differently. After all, this is the guy who hates the greatest interpretation of his material to ever be translated to screen – Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece, The Shining. To be fair to King, writers are never happy seeing their material adapted to screen (or at least rarely) and King’s material has produced enough cinematic turkeys to give him an understandably skewed view of success on screen.

The Mist features strong performances from leads Thomas Jane and Marcia Gay Harden as well as support players Toby Jones and Laurie Holden alongside a nice cast of familiar character actors. The creatures of The Mist deserve a credit as well, a bit cartoonish looking but somehow fitting for the monster movie scenario. The story gets admittedly heavy-handed at points, but presents an interesting message even if it is a bit overdone (drilled into your head, even) at times. Still, if you take The Mist for what it is – a good old fashioned horror movie – and don’t go in expecting anything remotely resembling Shawshank or Green Mile, you should find yourself pleasantly entertained from start to (almost) finish.

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