The joke's on anyone who pays to see this.


The Mist

THE MIST, an adaptation of Stephen King's classic novella. After a vicious storm wreaks havoc in their small town in Maine, artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) heads out to the town supermarket for some much-needed supplies with his young son, Billy (Nathan Gamble), and his neighbor, Norton (Andre Braugher), in tow. Their trip soon turns to terror when a menacing white mist settles in, leaving this group of locals and out-of-towners fighting for survival against an unknown, bloodthirsty enemy. When the local religious zealot (Marcia Gay Harden) begins to convince the group that the mist is punishment from God, Drayton and his cohorts realize that they may be trapped inside with an enemy just as dangerous as whatever is lurking outside.

Man is, at heart, a primitive, weak-minded beast, as much a threat to himself as any monster could ever be.

Frank Darabont's The Mist is easily the best horror film since The Blair Witch Project and the most socially frightening statement about humanity in the post 9/11 era.

A remarkably powerful adaptation of one of Stephen King's scariest works novella...

Like the novella the film, The Mist is most interesting in its observation of societal upheaval in the face of fear, an admirable venture into the always foggy, sometimes treacherous landscape of the human soul.

King and Darabont take the fear of the unknown to the extreme, with a finale that's emotionally brutal and bordering on sadistic.

I have got to hand it to Darabont for coming up with one of the most definitive, unforgettable (and downright haunting) climaxes in horror movie history. It's worth the price of admission, alone.

Suspenseful and scary The Mist is a reminder of what a great horror movie is all about.

If nothing else, you'll definitely leave the theater thinking about the ending.


30 Days of Night

Located in the northernmost part of Alaska, the town of Barrow experiences a complete lack of sunshine for an entire month once a year. The town is populated with tough, hardworking, and generally law-abiding citizens, so there hasn't been much for Sheriff Eben Olesen (Josh Hartnett) to do except brood over his separation from his fire marshall wife, Stella (Melissa George). As darkness descends for its annual 30-day day, though, a series of bizarre discoveries rocks the town--and very soon vampiric Marlow (Danny Huston) and his minions arrive, slaughtering and sucking on everyone they can catch, safe in the knowledge that they have much longer than usual until sunup. Eben, his little brother Jake (Mark Rendall), Stella, and a handful of others are forced to hide and fight for their lives until the sun returns.

Great setup, a mediocre middle, and no follow through.

Hard Candy director David Slade has fashioned a horror film that captures the coolest parts of Steve Niles' comic book series on the big screen, for all its narrative shortcomings, it succeeds at what it set out to do: make vampires scary again and terrify audiences doing it.

30 Days of Night manages to do for the vampire genre what 28 Days Later did for the zombie flick: give age-old monsters a modern-day makeover.

Commendable for its daring, unconventional vision of vampires

A refreshing variation on the vampire movie formula amidst the relentless deluge of watered-down, teen-oriented remakes.

30 Days is gory, graphic, suspenseful and occasionally nonsensical. But it's a vampire movie and if you're into that genre you'll probably be into this.


Poseidon Adventure

It's New Year's Eve and festivities have begun aboard the luxury cruise Poseidon, at sea in the North Atlantic.

One of the finest vessels of its kind, Poseidon stands more than 20 stories tall, boasts 800 staterooms and 13 passenger decks.

Tonight, many of the ship's guests have gathered to greet the New Year in style in the magnificent Main Ballroom.

A Rogue Wave; a monstrous wall of water over one hundred feet high, bearing down on them with tremendous speed. The wave strikes with colossal force, pitching the ship heavily to port before rolling it completely upside down leaving vast sections of the ship in darkness and chaos.

In its aftermath a few hundred survivors are left to huddle in the still-intact Main Ballroom, now resting below the waterline. They should stay together, the captain maintains, and wait here for rescue.

One man, prefers to test the odds alone. Ignoring orders, he prepares to exit the Ballroom and find his own way to safety.

Wary of alliances, he reluctantly leads a small band of survivors upward through the bowels of the ship.

Determined to fight their way to the surface, they must forge a path together through layers of wreckage as the ship continues to sink.

If a ship flips over and it's full of people that nobody cares about, does it matter if anyone makes it out alive? Allow me to answer that rhetorical question...no.

As far as disaster movies and remakes are concerned, Poseidon is, well, a disaster.

Anyone with the faintest memory of its 1972 predecessor will wonder where most of the plot went, and the dialogue is so stilted it can honestly be said the less the better.

Your average episode of 'The Love Boat' had more meaningful drama, emotion, and peril.

The best acting in Poseidon hails from the dead bodies.... who lie there, convincingly inert.

Here we get the impression that the only thing on the minds of these filmmakers is how well they can polish up a turd before throwing it at unsuspecting audiences.

Stay home, take a bath with a toy boat and create your own waves, instead.