The best horror film in years. Original, unsettling, eerie and thoughtful. With Monsters.

I've watched a lot of horror films. A lot. Every month, there seems to be a new horror film. Some new over the top 'extreme' horror movie. But first of all, you've got to follow the rules.After all, the vast majority of horror films are pretty similar.

Dump a bunch of screamy, hormonal teenagers in the middle of nowhere, and watch them die in a variety of increasingly splattery ways. If its not death by flying bats (Jeepers Creepers), its death by serial spree killers who invent stuff (Saw, The Cell), death by Dennis The menace/Wolverine hybrid (Freddy), death by renimated space zombies (Jason X), death by underground cave dwellers (The Descent, The Cave), death by Videotape (the Ring), death by killer man eating vagina (Teeth), death by Virginity (Cherry Falls), death by...being killed by death (Final Destination), death by redneck hillbillies (Halloween, Hostel, Devils Rejects, House of 1000 Corpses, All the boys love Mandy Lane), redneck hillbilly truckers (Roadkill aka Joyride), redneck hillbilly flesh eating viruses (Cabin Fever), or a combination of all the above, with added Chainsaws.... ( which is any film with "texas" or "Chainsaw" in the title. (Except 'Walker, Texas Ranger", but thats because you can't kill Chuck Norris. Like the Russian Reversal, Chuck Norris kills YOU!).

Then make sure you throw in some excessive and needless nudity, some hormonal teenagers getting it on the first reel (sex=death, kiddies), market it to a bunch of 14 year old school kids who think its 'extreme' and watch the money roll right in. Especially if they never saw the original of any of these films from the seventies or from Japan, so they don't realise just how generic, cookie cutter, identikit and formulaically unoriginal all these films are, made by people who are just quite content to throw body parts and red syrup at the screen whilst chopping breasts off with scythes. (Hostel Part II), devoid of subtext, or suggestion, subtlelty or dread - just an endless stream of anonymous, meaningless carnage.And then you begin to wish that they would make a horror film for adults

And thank god they have. Because The Mist is an honest to goodness horror film the likes you haven't seen in years.

The premise, like many a horror film, is faintly ludicrous, but played with complete conviction. Following a storm which puts a tree through his living room, painter David Drayton goes to the local store to get some supplies so he can patch things up and make good until the insurance people arrive. And once he gets to town, an eerie, disembodied mist approaches. A man, hysterical and covered with blood, is fleeing from it, scared for his life. Seeking refuge in the store, and unable to see more than five feet through the thick mist, tensions rise. Fingers are pointed. The blame is laid. And then one by one, factions build, and tear each other apart. People disappear, before it becomes clear this is no ordinary mist. Not at all.

For it holds a danger beyond anything they have known - and a danger that can only be quenched by blood, so it seems. And the survivors wait for the inevitable, for the moment when the peace is shattered and blood is spilt. And its not just the danger outside, but from the growing hysteria within, when rationality is abandoned, and the end days are seen to be upon us......and for those whose lives will be taken.

Hardly the stuff of high art, but in the hands of the extremly capable Frank Darabont, this film remains true to its B movie origins yet goes beyond the mere surface detail. In the hands of a lesser film maker, this would be as excerable as the utterly atrocious Dreamcatcher. Here, played with total conviction and wrly wringing the tension out of the conflicts within the survivors, who slowly tear themselves apart and set upon each other, spurred on by the misinterpreted words of a religion to which they turn when nothing else makes any sense or gives them any hope. It deftly raises the tension, cranking it up notch by tiny notch, as peopel walk off into the mistnever to be seen again, as bodies are mutilated and as the siege starts to break and whatever it is that is in the mist comes, thirsty for blood. As it explodes into a bloody, violent, animalistic and brutal attack upon the survivors.

Far beyond its normal contemporaries, the Mist tries to evoke the age of horror movies long gone. Gone is the splatter gore and the super fast cutting, the jump scares and scraping noises of metal on metal... instead there is the low, ominious rumble of a monster unseen.

Low, slow, almost documentary-esque camera shots, handheld and raw, thats builds an ominous, eeries, unsettling air. The characters are not mere stereotypes, but have their own motivations, their own desires, natural to all of us. What would you do? Wouldn't you want to run straight out of there, rescue your children alone at home as the mist creeps in? Wouldn't you want to stay put and save your own life? How could you decide which path to take? Ho would you make sense of it? Would you turn to god, feaful of retribution and judgement day? Or would you trust your instincts, your own rational mind, just to stay alive? But wouldn't it be comforting, to choose the path of the chosen as Armageddon closes in? What would you do when all hope is gone, as the monsters close in, and you have but one promise to keep... the promise you made to your won son that you wouldn't let the monsters get him?

These are the sort of questions that The Mist asks.And it gives no easy answers.

From the references to John Carpenter's 'The Thing', The Mist evokes many a horror classic and builds its own moral dilemmas and questions around it. From its often Otherwordly design, to its siege set up which evokes the "Night of the Living Dead", to its man on the run trying to survive spirit of "War of the Worlds", its builds a sense of foreboding that few can match or equal.

Evoking the isolation and social breakdown of "The Thing" and "Lord Of The Flies", the slow, ominious, creeping dread of a foe that neither be bargained with or even understood, The Mist is a film far beyond the sum of its parts. Masterfully written and constructed with a ending twist that is both harrowing and uncompromising - and one that M Night would kill to be talented enough to write - it is bleak and uncommercial.

Dispensing with normal horror movie conventions, grounded in realism yet with a faintly ludicrous premise, the Mist works simply because of its conviction and its believability. Thought provoking, intelligent, complex, engrossing and serious, without being dumb, hackneyed, or cliched, The Mist is a horror film that the vast majority of modern horror fans couldn't stomach - not because of the gore or lack thereof, but because it asks uneasy questions, and gives no easy answers, along with a few wellplaced setpieces to give anyone a jolt. if you want a safe, predictable horror movie to scare you just enough and then you can forget about it the second you walk out of the door, you've come to the wrong place. This engrossing final reel is one of the most unsettling in a long, long time.

Devoid of commercial considerations and the need to sell popcorn, the Mist is far beyond the normal blood and guts crowd that frequents the genre. Cerebral, literate, and intelligent, it will last and last long after many other crass, exploitational, generic formula horror movies have passed into insignificance. With its minimal box office, and an almost apologetic, unannounced release into Uk cinemas that feels more like a contractual obligation than anything else, see this film if you can. Its the best horror film I've seen in years (apart from Silent Hill).

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