The Mist, 2007 - ★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
This was an OK movie. I enjoyed it. It was good enough to hold my interest (which is not easy to do).
Stephen King can build believable characters and Frank Darabont does a good job following up on that.
First, a few trigger warnings. If you have issues with gore horror, this might be a problem here, though it's far from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The religious zealots are more of a problem if you have issues with that. Unfortunately, it's also believable: all you need to do is to read the news. People kill in the name of God for much less than being threatened by the supernatural.
The movie builds toward the climax nicely, and you get the chance to get up close and personal with the characters. The feelings of dread and panic are believable. There's a bit of a cross into the cliche with some military experiment gone wrong and creatures crossing from another dimension. This is not a huge spoiler, because the origin of the horrors in the movie is of little importance. Way more important is what the people do to survive and how they cope (or don't cope) with the monstrosities. This is the beef of the movie, and King drives it home well.
I'm a bit angry with the ending (Spoiler alert! stop here!!).
It doesn't end well, and I don't like how fast David (Thomas Jane) gave up on everybody, including his son. He decided that, nope, that's it, time to commit group suicide and give up. It feels pushed. King wanted to show us that real hell is making decisions, but this last one doesn't make sense with the rest of the movie. Oh well, it was still fun.