THE MIST (15)

9:14am Friday 4th July 2008

AS DIRECTOR of The Shawshank Redemption, which is now rated at No 2 in IMDb's list of the best films of all time - to say nothing of his hugely successful The Green Mile - Frank Darabont's latest Stephen King book adaptation has been eagerly awaited.

After a terrible storm Hollywood poster artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) surveys the devastation and wishes he had the forethought to put his latest painting in a safer place the night before. Even more tiresomely, his young son Billy (Nathan Gamble) tells him the dead tree belonging to his bolshie neighbour, Brent Norton (Andre Braugher), has crushed his boathouse.

Deciding this isn't the moment to have a row with Brent, who should have felled the tree weeks ago, he offers him a lift to the local shop to get in supplies. So, along with Billy they arrive to find the town doing a roaring trade.

Suddenly a mist draws in and a man comes rushing into the shop with blood pouring from his face, saying that something has taken his friend.

There is doom and gloom from the local religious nutter Mrs Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) who is certain God is sending his wrath. But in general everyone tries to keep calm; that is until an enormous bug-like creature hammers on the window and things really start to go bump in the night or, in this case, the mist.

Oh dear, this is massively cliché riddled nonsense. Those who like King and Darabont will be disappointed, whereas anyone embarking on their first creature horror would be better off going for something like Alien.

Long before CGI was born or thought of, Alfred Hitchcock managed to grab everyone's attention with his film The Birds (1963), where a coastal town is under attack from gulls. This was a suspense-filled story made more terrifying because there was a real feeling of believability.

The trouble with The Mist is CGI is becoming a trifle passé. You can't just rely on silly looking monsters to hold a film together; more effort needs to be made building up the tension.

There is nothing that grabs one's attention, everything from the religious theme to the explanation as to why they are being attacked in the first place, which I won't spoil for you, have all been seen before, many times and better.

Clare Shepherd 3/10

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