Scary how bad a horror movie can be

It’s neighbor against
neighbor as monsters threaten from the mist.

By ROGER MOORE

ORLANDO SENTINEL

You don’t appreciate how difficult it is to act terrified in front of a special effect that is added after the actor has done his bit until you see it done badly.

That sort of thing wasn’t taught at The Actor’s Studio, back in the day. But if Thomas Jane, Laurie Holden, Toby Jones and especially William Sadler prove one thing in “The Mist,” it’s that it ought to be.

The latest and least of the collaborations between horror writer Stephen King and his house director, Frank Darabont (“The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Green Mile”), “The Mist” is a straight-no-chaser creature feature, one so poorly executed that you would be shocked to learn that Darabont cut his teeth writing “Nightmare on Elm Street” scripts.

It’s laughable, and not in the good way.

The set-up? A storm hits Castle Rock in that remote part of Maine that looks just like Louisiana (where they shot this). The power goes out. Radio stations fall silent. Cell-phone service cuts off.

A fog rolls in. A hysterical, bloodied man (Jeff DeMunn) crashes in on the folks stocking up at the Food House supermarket, and utters his warning.

“Don’t go out there! There’s something in the mist!”

Trapped in a store with three secretive soldiers (what do they know and when did they know it?), a religious crank (Marcia Gay Harden, typecast), a philosopher store manager (Jones), assorted yokels (Sadler) and common-sense school teachers, two feuding neighbors manage to break the crowd down into factions.

Those faction leaders are the concerned father and movie-poster illustrator (Jane) who believes the monster sightings, and the testy, litigious big-city lawyer (Andre Braugher) who won’t believe.

It’s a movie without music, for the most part, kind of a filmed boogeyman single-set play with an increasingly paranoid cast of “types” bickering over how to survive. Where Darabont goes horribly wrong is in wiping away that paranoia, removing doubt. He over-explains what these people are up against. He shows us the monsters, early on (King’s story, not one of his best, does this, too.)

The monsters are an icky grab-bag of Hollywood horror. But mostly just digitally funny.

The intentional laughs come from the foul-mouthed religious fanatic and the crusty, plucky old school teacher (Frances Sternhagen).

The survivors take time between monster attacks to debate religion, class, IQ and “Why’d you never ask me out in high school?” Some go into the mist. And they don’t come back. Not with all their parts, anyway.

DeMunn, the one actor with eyes wild enough to look like a man who has just seen something awful, stands out in this cast.

Perhaps he should open an acting studio. “Teaching terror: Horror acting in the age of computer-generated effects.”

Somebody needs to.