Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today, I’m going to explain a horror, thriller movie called The Mist.
Spoilers Ahead! Watch out and take care. In Bridgeton, Maine, the artist David,
his wife Stephanie and their eight-year-old son Billy take shelter from a huge thunderstorm,
which results in a lot of property damage the next morning. Surveying around their property,
Billy discovers damage that has been done to their boathouse by their neighbor Brent’s tree.
While inspecting the boathouse, the family discovers a mysterious mist hovering over
the lake in front of them, which seems to be coming from the mountain across, yet they didn’t
give it too much of a thought and continued on. David goes to talk to his neighbor about trading
insurance information, to cover for the repairs on the boathouse. In that talk he discovers that
Brent’s car got crushed by another tree during the thunderstorm and as a favor he drives Brent to the
town with his son in the backseat. On their way into town, they drive by a few suspicious military
vehicles going the opposite way of them. After the devastating storm last night, a lot of people
went to the supermarket to buy groceries, amongst them are David, his son and Brent.
Suddenly the sound of sirens can be heard, as military vehicles and police cars rush by the
store. An elderly man by the name of Dan Miller, comes running into the store with a bloody nose,
shouting that there is something in the mist and it took a young man. People thought him to be
crazy. Now slowly, but steadily, a mist starts surrounding the store and a sudden earthquake
appears, putting all the people in a panic. People are reluctant to leaving the store after what just
happened, but one woman goes on about having to see her daughters. She left them alone,
letting the older one, who is 8 years old, babysit the younger one. She is worried about them,
since the older one sometimes forgets to check on her sister. Since no one would accept to
accompany her, she decides to leave alone and go into the mist, where she was not seen again.
Groups of people started forming, which would talk about good old times, in an effort to calm down.
In search of blankets for his son, David was told to look for them in the logging dock by
the store manager Ollie Weeks. Once he enters the dock through the backdoor, he discovers a
malfunctioning emergency generator creating a lot of smoke and decides to turn it off.
In the silent darkness, David suddenly hears a weird noise coming from behind the garage door, as
if something were pushing against it. When he goes back inside to tell a group of local men about the
noise, they didn’t believe him, but rather decided on opening the door in order to fix the generator.
He started arguing with the locals, saying that it is not safe out there. That upset one of the
guys who accused David of looking down on them and believing they are stupid. Against David’s advice,
the bagger boy Norm, trying to prove his bravery, opens the garage door, but is immediately met by
a tentacled creature that grabs him by his leg. David and Ollie try to pull him out of
the monster’s grip, but fail to do so, resulting in the boy’s death. The others barely managed to
drive off the creature and cut off one of its tentacles with an axe before closing the door.
While discussing whether or not they should tell the truth to everyone else in the store,
they realize that it is not as safe inside as they think. Even after telling the customers about what
had just happened in the logging dock, they still wouldn’t believe and just laughed it all off,
as if it were a bad joke. Their opinions changed, however, after showing them proof in the form of
the tentacle they managed to cut off. After the store owner confirmed the existence of a threat,
David and Ollie directed the customers to barricade the storefront windows. Mrs. Carmody,
a religious fanatic, begins preaching about an impending Armageddon and how this is judgment day,
brough upon them by God, which scares the children in the store. Annoyed by her arrogance,
Amanda Dunfrey, a teacher, steps up and slaps Mrs. Carmody to stop her from talking further nonsense.
In disbelief of the existence of any monsters, a group of sceptics, led by Brent Norton,
decide to leave the store in hopes of seeking rescue outside. David tries to talk some sense
into Brent, which ends up making his neighbor even angrier. Hoping to be able to obtain some weapons,
one of the town locals volunteers to go out and try to retrieve a shotgun from Ambrose’s truck.
In order to find out how far he will manage to go they decide to tie a rope around his waist.
As the group walks into the mist, the rope starts to be pulled rapidly for some moments,
before it stops completely. With silence and fear filling the room, David start pulling the rope
back inch by inch, already expecting the worst. At one moment, blood started appearing on the other
side of the rope, revealing at its very end merely the lower part of the biker’s body. The whole
store gasped in awe, shielding the children’s eyes from the horror they’ve just witnessed.
Now that the people have seen proof, they start taking the threat seriously. In preparations for
the night, some people put up lights all over the store, believing that the lights might scare
the beasts away. Sadly, that trick only ends up attracting the creepy enormous flying insects.
Slamming against the glass enough times, they manage to break the glass and swarm the store.
Everyone starts panicking and running from the creatures, but some of them did so in vain.
One of the wasp-like creatures flew directly into the store clerk Sally, stinging her in her neck.
In the ensuing panic, two people are killed by the insects and another is burned to death in
an attempt to incinerate the creatures. Sally’s death left one particular man grieving: Jessup,
who had just admitted his feelings for her a few minutes prior. Mrs. Carmody perfectly described
a scene from the Bible that replicates this exact incident and in the chaos is miraculously spared
from an insect, leading her to proselytize more fervently and gain followers among the survivors.
Meanwhile, the store manager Ollie saves Billy’s life by shooting on of
the insects before it could attack him. The next morning, a small group, led by
David goes to the neighboring pharmacy in search of medical supplies and some other survivors,
who might have sought shelter in there. Amanda and others tried to convince him of the danger
this idea poses, and that he could leave his son orphaned, but he believed it to be safe enough to
get to the pharmacy, reminding them of how far the biker got before he was actually killed.
Even Mrs. Carmody advised them against leaving, going off in a monologue of her religious talk,
when she gets hit in the head by a can. It turns out to have been thrown by an
ex-teacher Irene Reppler, who told her to shut her mouth. Going through the mist,
they actually quickly got to the pharmacy. Since it was quiet inside, they believed to be safe.
However, inside the pharmacy, they discover the nest of giant spiders along with the dead group
of people led by Brent. Their bodies were used as hatching ground for a million new spiders.
They get attacked by the giant spiders who killed two men using their burning web to skin and wound
their prey. In an attempt to retreat, Dan gets met by another spider in front of the exit door,
which he brutally stabs using merely a stick. Luckily, the rest of the group get back
to safety inside the store. Mrs. Carmody, who had opposed the expedition, uses this
failure to increase her influence, by offering protection from divine wrath to new converts.
Many believers would start forming circles of prayer, accepting all new joiners. David
recalls the unusual last words of the deceased soldier in the pharmacy, which were “I’m sorry.”,
which leads him to believe that the military has something to do with this catastrophe.
In search of the other soldiers that were locked up in the store with them, they find out that
two of the had committed suicide, probably out of the guilt they felt. When confronted, the
third soldier, Jessup, reveals that a government project to discover other dimensions was underway
at the base, and that scientists may have opened a doorway into a dimension containing the creatures
invading the town. In rage of finding out these news, Mrs. Carmody's followers stab Jessup and
offer him as a sacrifice. They expel him from the supermarket, where he is immediately devoured
by a giant praying mantis-like creature. After experiencing such traumatic scenes,
David’s son Billy asks his father to promise him not to let the monsters take him.
The next morning, David and his group, which consists of Amanda, his son Billy, Ollie, Bud,
Irene Reppler and Dan Miller, prepare to leave the store to seek refuge from the crazy coven
that has formed in the store. While everyone was still asleep, they try to go for the front door,
but are met there, by Mrs. Carmody. She claims to be God’s vessel and preaches about God requiring
a blood sacrifice to be pleased, portraying him as a monster. She demands that Billy be delivered
as the next sacrifice. In the ruckus, David was ready to fight her in order to protect his son,
however, Ollie guns her down first, in her rage of insanity.
He goes on to threatening her traumatized followers into standing down, thus allowing
the group to escape. Despite his best efforts, he and two others get devoured by the creatures,
while trying to get to David’s van. Luckily at least Bud manages to run back inside the store.
Only David, Billy, Amanda, Dan and Irene manage to reach David’s car in the end. In an effort
to grab Amanda’s pistol from the car hood, David barely escapes a monster’s attack, but manages to
get the pistol, which he believed to be of use. They drive off towards David’s house through the
mist, where he finds his wife Stephanie already dead and hanging from webs. Devastated by what he
has seen, he decides to drive them all away from the town. Along the way, they pass by several
abandoned cars on the highway and come across a colossal six-legged beast. After driving for
hours, they inevitably run out of gas. With no means of escaping the mist and terrifying noises
approaching their car, David pulls out Amanda’s pistol, suggesting with the look on his face,
that they should kill themselves, rather than die a horrible death. As he counts the bullets left,
he realizes they are one bullet short. He decides to spare everyone else the pain and be the one to
stay alive and kill them. Right before shooting his son first, Billy wakes up with a pistol to
his head and a shot is fired. His wish to not be taken by the monsters had been fulfilled,
for better or for worst. David proceeds to shoot the other three survivors with the remaining
bullets before leaving the car, screaming in pain to be taken by the creatures. While waiting there,
all of a sudden, the mist starts to dissipate, revealing the vanguard of a
US Army armored column that is in the process of exterminating the creatures and restoring order.
On one of the trucks, he sees the store people who were rescued after they had left,
including the woman who had left to see her children. In that moment David realizes that
he killed his son and the other survivors for nothing and continues screaming in agony.