Rachel and I caught The Hunger Games last weekend. Neither of us had read the book, but I was pretty eager to see it regardless. I’d heard great things, and when we saw that it was playing on three screens at Empire Theatres in Charlottetown, we figured it wouldn’t be completely packed. continue reading →
When it comes to movies, I’ll watch just almost anything. There are some genres I’ll gravitate towards and others I generally stay away from, but just about anything is fair game.
Horror films would fit into that “others I generally stay away from” group, so when I started hearing about The Mist—a monster movie adapted from a Stephen King novella—a few years ago, I didn’t take much pass of it. But then after hearing about how interesting the movie was and coming across it on Netflix in the same week, I decided to give it a shot.
The Mist, directed by The Walking Dead‘s and The Shawshank Redemption‘s Frank Darabont, is overrated. The film centers on a group of townsfolk who barricade themselves in a grocery store after a thick mist—filled with deadly creatures—covers the surrounding area. I liked the concept, and the screenplay isn’t terrible (save for the last page), but the majority of the performances and visual effects are.
The movie is largely about the group’s dynamics, particularly as the local cat lady/religious zealot (played wonderfully by Marcia Gay Harden) starts to convince some of the crowd that what they are experiencing is the wrath of God. The best horror in the film comes from this, and a few of these scenes were truly chilling. Unfortunately, too many of the nasty-creature moments were laughably bad to save the movie.
To top it all off, The Mist slaps you with an ending it doesn’t earn, and it left me feeling very unsatisfied.
For fans of The Walking Dead, you’ll find at least three stars from that show in this flick. The funny part is that they all essentially play the same characters.
Like I said, The Mist is available on Netflix Canada. I know a lot of people really liked this movie, particularly for its ending that I hated, so if you think I’m wrong tell me so.
A couple more movies from our Christmas Movie Marathon that I’ve yet to write up. First: Scrooged.
Scrooged is a hilarious retelling of ‘A Christmas Carol,’ centering on Bill Murray as Frank Cross, a classic selfish TV executive who’s in the middle of producing a live broadcast musical version of the Dickens classic. Like Ebenezer Scrooge himself, Cross is visited by three ghosts (this time, in the days leading up to Christmas rather than all on Christmas Eve) sent to show him past, present, and future. You know the rest of the story.
I really enjoyed it, primarily because I had no idea what to expect (an effect I just ruined for you). The title and DVD cover suggest it’s Christmas comedy starring Bill Murray, so I knew it’d be a fit for the Christmas Movie Marathon. The film had me laughing out loud throughout, and the reimagining of ‘A Christmas Carol’ focusing on a character trying to reimagine the story himself was quite clever.
Billy Murray’s 1980′s career is something I’m only beginning to discover. After seeing Stripes, rewatching Ghostbusters, and making Scrooged part of the marathon, it’s become obvious why he’s revered as a comedic master. I’ve always enjoyed the deadpan humour in his 2000′s filmography, and I imagine that it’d be even funnier if I’d grown up with his 1980′s slapstick.