The biggest problem with The Mist is that it is not what it thinks it is. It thinks it is a deep statement with a lot of human pathos, but it's really just a monster movie.
Had it realized that, I think, it could have been a really good, and more importantly, a really fun monster movie. Instead, the picture takes itself far too seriously to be entertaining but not enough to becoming ridiculous, so end up with a mediocre cinematic experience.
The movie is based on a novella by Stephen King. Although it is regarded as one of the writer's best works (it won some award somewhere), I think, frankly, it kind of sucks. King clearly loves the idea of a diverse group of characters trapped in a single location fighting of forces of evil. Just counting the number of King works I am familiar with, he's used at least four times, to varying degrees of success with Maximum Overdrive (a gas station), The Langoliers (an airplane), The Regulators (a house) and with The Mist, a supermarket.
As always, the main character is an average Joe from New England. Here, he's a commercial artist named David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his house gets damaged in a major storm. He goes into town with his son (Nathan Gamble) and touchy next door neighbor Norton (Andre Braugher, with the movie's best performance). While visiting the supermarket, a thick mist surrounds the area and it's rumored that something in the mist is killing people. It becomes quickly apparent that this rumor is fact when what is apparently a giant squid kills a store employee, but not everyone believes in the monster, meaning the shoppers and store employees are quickly put into three groups- disbelievers, led by Norton, who reject the existence of any monsters, rationalists, led by David, and religious radicals, led by Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) who from their own religious cult that does not exactly think logically.
Darabont, who made the much better King movies The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, tries to add a level of philosophy 101 discourse not found in the source material that comes off sounding both stupid and pretentious. Characters have conversations like:
Person A: "I believe that humans are inherently good. I have faith in humanity!"
Person B: "No! Humanity is basically bad!"
Did Darabont really think we were supposed to get something profound from this? I hope not, but it seems so, particularly when you taken into account the ridiculous and pointless ending the filmmaker added to the novela's which was just fine. You know you are in trouble when a director adds opera-sounding music to the end of a movie to give events more significance than they actually have.
If you want to see something that discuss the nature of humanity, read a Shakespeare play or see a movie by Stanley Kubrick. If you want to see a cheesy but fun movie about monsters killing people, well, those are pretty easy to find, and you don't need my help.
Stephen King's The Mist (2007)