A lesson on why embalming should never be done

Buried Alive (1990)

Been looking for this movie ever since I got interested in Frank Darabont as a director after seeing The Shawshank Redemption (1994). But as there wasn't a proper release from it my search was for nothing. Forgot about it for a while until today on my way home I stopped by a film store like I do quite often. There on the back shelf under the clearance items I found a proper Finnish release of it. I even watch quite closely all the new releases so dunno how I could have missed this. So I went home and watched it. Well I have to say I was quite disapointed. The thing is that when you follow a certain director you get your expectations from his previous works and in this case they range from absolutely brilliant to quite good. Well this wasn't quite good. Actually it was quite bad. The thing where Darabont excels is character development and this one had basicly none. All the characters are very superficial and thus meaningless. The story in itself is quite nice with quite a few twists, though the ending with all the carpentry was a bit too much. Apart from a few quite nice scenes like the resurrection and the wine glass bit, it was way too common. So all in all a below average thriller. I'm still glad I finally saw this, but disapointed how "un-Darabontian" it was. Biggest surprise this gave me was to actually see how gigantic the leap from this to The Shawshank Redemption (1994) was for Darabont.
45%

You can read the reviews of the rest of Darabont's movies here. Also need to mention the series The Walking Dead which Darabont created, which judging by the first two episodes seems to be surprisingly good apocalyptic zombie series. Sure it recycles the old ideas but it's been quite good at dodging the usual pitfalls of the genre.

Weird things in the mist

The Mist (2007)

Had my hopes up for this one as I've really liked Frank Darabont's previous works. It started off quite good and carried on to be interesting for a while. I really liked the character development and the issues raised of a completely different mix of people being locked up in a small(ish) space. Marcia Gay Harden makes an awesome role as a religious freak and even Thomas Jane manages not to spoil the mood. So that department was well in hand, the problem was the "things" (I'll call them things as I don't want to spoil anything) in the mist and the "horror" they cause. They weren't really scary and all of the scares they make are the age old shock surprises. The only horror was built by the characters themselves and the movie would have worked better with just that, leaving the "things" as smaller side characters. Towards the end the film gets actually quite borig as it focuses too much on the "things" and leaves the great characters aside. Before the last few minutes of the film I would have rated it below 50 percent or something like that, but my god the ending is just something totally brilliant. It's so damn cruel, dark, sad and yet somehow hilarious. One of the best endings I've seen in a long time and especially awesome in the Hollywood standard of endings. Even if you don't like the rest of the movie, the last few minutes make it all worth the 2 hours of wait.
81%


Since we're talking about Darabont, let's look at his previous films in comparison.



The Majestic (2001)

Quite an uneven movie of a suspected communist screenwriter who suffers from amnesia after a car accident being mistaken for another guy and trying to rebuild a movie theatre. Jim Carrey might have not been the right choise for the leading role.
63%



The Green Mile (1999)

Really solid movie of death row inmates and the guards who all have their share of problems. At first I was a bit scared of the cast, but they all do amazing work. Really well done touching movie.
85%



The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

One of my all time favourite movies. If I had to write a book about character development, I would just say watch this movie. Just brilliant.
100%



The Woman in the Room (1983)

Part of the Stephen King's Night Shift Collection. This was quite a surprise when I managed to get a hold of it, you can see clearly that the characters are what drives Darabont, even thou the rest is a bit shaky. Solid first effort.
59%


I still haven't seen Buried Alive so can't comment on that one.