The Mist

In The Mist we get to know a small American town in which everyone seems to want to come across as incompetent, over-reactive, small-minded, humorless but above all very unfriendly. Everyone seems to hate each other, and the few people who form the exception, the people who do not constantly act like an idiot, and thus with whom I could best identify, are also the first to die (already in episode 1). This phenomenon is increasingly seen in drama series. At the The Walking Dead I decided to discontinue watching after three seasons (I was ultimately in favor of the zombies, which is not the maker's intention I assume). What makes The Mist even easier to dismiss are the worthless special effects and terrible acting. If you make a television show that is located in a thick layer of mist, you want to make sure that the fog looks like a fog. I suspect the makers were trapped inside their own cloud of incompetence.

"The Mist" TV adaptation was good at first, but then it becames bored. Stephen King's novel was adapted and theatrically released in 2007, a great film, but in 2017 this TV version was released, a weak production with great performances and special effects, but something is missing. This production is not bad, but not that good. A watchable work, no more.

Of course this is going to be compared to the literature followed by the remake film, which leaves us with high expectations. The first episode started out brilliant and left me wanting more, it was around episode 4-5 that I started to find things dragging on with very little action. There were really fun bits of the movie that didn't make it to season 1, maybe season 2? Though I'm confident we won't see that gracing our screens anytime soon. As a standalone series it's not without it's own ideas, however due to the dragging mid season I can't recommend this, I'm giving it a 6/10 for the Mist Film lovers, however 3-4/10 for normal viewage.

The pilot is an emotional roller-coaster. At first you are amused with how bad the writing is, but then you get angry at how bad the writing is. And then it's funny again because you realize it must be a parody. In case the title was not self-evident, this show is about a mist. The mist is coming and it will kill you with the most absurd amalgam of bad acting, bad writing and a tasteless soup of sociopolitical stereotypes. However, I was slightly entertained at how stupid it all was. So I give it a 3.

A mist has descended upon the town of Bridgeville, Maine and something inside is killing people. Bryan Hunt in military uniform tries to warn the police but he's locked up by chief Heisel on suspicion of being intoxicated. An unstable Mia Lambert is the other prisoner. The Copeland family is split between the police station and the mall.

I do like the 2007 movie but that movie's biggest moment is its shocking ending. Presumably, that cannot be done on the TV show unless it intends to ends quickly. When it does suicides early, they're unearned emotionally and it lacks any shock value. The problem starts with the characters. None of them are likeable. Everybody has some deep dark secret or other crazy characteristics. Their actions are questionable. A guy is willy nilly letting out prisoners without authorization and that's before it gets crazy. Drawing lot is silly especially only a few people would know the location of the radio and how to use it. It makes little sense to send random strangers stumbling into the office searching for the thing and why aren't people waiting for them on the other side of the door? I know why. They would hear the gunshot and the writers needed to connect the dots no matter how ugly the line. Almost none of the characters make sense unless the mist turns them into non-sense. That's certainly possible but it would leave nobody with rooting interest. They want the girl to be that but she is too infuriating to be appealing. I don't care about anybody and I don't care about their secrets.

The show still has the creature feature aspect. It should have started with a scary horror scene at the base but it meanders around with a slow reveal of some teenage drama. Stranger Things started with a monster at the base and that show does OK. It's a standard move which this show fails to understand. The start is off-putting, boring, and tiresome. As for the creatures, the small insects come with certain issues and the show leaves some nagging questions about the logic of this world. The smoke monsters are problematic for different reason. Neither are satisfying although not bad enough to be decisive. The logic of people is so upside down that the crazy lady actually makes sense. The creature feature aspect gets morphed into body horrors territory. I can roll with all these differences if I actually cared about anybody in here.