I love Frank Darabont's The Mist (so some SPOILERS for it as well), one of the best horror movies of the last decades, with its simple, effective premise and great build-up of tension.
This show, a new adaptation which takes only the general scenario from King's short novel, jettisons its best, most iconic element - i.e. the actual monsters hiding in the titular mist - to focus on fake identities, shrill religious maniacs and people turning into murderous psychos within a couple of days.
As of the first season finale, it's never clear what the mist is or does. In the 2007 movie it's implied to come from another dimension, but what matters is that dangerous creatures lurk within it. Here, the mist acts like a sentient supernatural entity, alternatively killing characters within a few seconds, ignoring them, choking them, turning them crazy, mutating them, summoning cloaked figures, carnivorous bugs or dead people.
Now, in the horror genre SOME mystery is a good thing, but here the rules concerning the main threat are so vague, the whole thing reeks of desperate writers who don't know what they are doing. I wouldn't have been a bit surprised if some character had walked into the mist only to be attacked by either Count Dracula or a Velociraptor. It's like a horror bargain bin.
Much like in the last years of The Walking Dead, as the season goes on the supernatural threat becomes second fiddle to human conflict; unfortunately, in spite of the focus on personal drama, the characters don't quite work.
This is supposed to be an ensemble show, with several groups of people trapped in different locations and striving to survive, but nearly all of them range from unpleasant to loathsome and do things which are not only despicable but completely unbelievable, like murdering another survivor because she wants to stay behind with a wounded companion. If you thought Marcia Gay Harden's character was over-the-top in the movie, you ain't seen nothing yet.
It's garden-variety nihilism of the "See, people are really awful!" kind. Yeah, (some) people are awful, especially when the chips are down, but even their actions, however amoral, generally make some amount of sense.
Pity, because there are some moments of tension and decent performances; in particular, the protagonist and the guy playing the sheriff were quite good, but the latter undergoes such absurd developments, it becomes hard to take him seriously.
5/10
This show, a new adaptation which takes only the general scenario from King's short novel, jettisons its best, most iconic element - i.e. the actual monsters hiding in the titular mist - to focus on fake identities, shrill religious maniacs and people turning into murderous psychos within a couple of days.
As of the first season finale, it's never clear what the mist is or does. In the 2007 movie it's implied to come from another dimension, but what matters is that dangerous creatures lurk within it. Here, the mist acts like a sentient supernatural entity, alternatively killing characters within a few seconds, ignoring them, choking them, turning them crazy, mutating them, summoning cloaked figures, carnivorous bugs or dead people.
Now, in the horror genre SOME mystery is a good thing, but here the rules concerning the main threat are so vague, the whole thing reeks of desperate writers who don't know what they are doing. I wouldn't have been a bit surprised if some character had walked into the mist only to be attacked by either Count Dracula or a Velociraptor. It's like a horror bargain bin.
Much like in the last years of The Walking Dead, as the season goes on the supernatural threat becomes second fiddle to human conflict; unfortunately, in spite of the focus on personal drama, the characters don't quite work.
This is supposed to be an ensemble show, with several groups of people trapped in different locations and striving to survive, but nearly all of them range from unpleasant to loathsome and do things which are not only despicable but completely unbelievable, like murdering another survivor because she wants to stay behind with a wounded companion. If you thought Marcia Gay Harden's character was over-the-top in the movie, you ain't seen nothing yet.
It's garden-variety nihilism of the "See, people are really awful!" kind. Yeah, (some) people are awful, especially when the chips are down, but even their actions, however amoral, generally make some amount of sense.
Pity, because there are some moments of tension and decent performances; in particular, the protagonist and the guy playing the sheriff were quite good, but the latter undergoes such absurd developments, it becomes hard to take him seriously.
5/10