I liked it early on...the imagery of it was quite a draw. I guess my only complaint is that I don't like when movies don't establish the "rules" of the movie in the first 10 or 15 minutes...great movies tend to just set up how it's gonna work in the first 10 or 15, and then spend the rest of the time telling the story...busted opportunity movies (think "Inception") tend to have to keep explaining rules 40, 50, 55 minutes in or contradict rules that it already established earlier. In the early scene where Sandra Bullock (who was strong in a movie where she wasn't given an opportunity to be better) and her sister are driving, there's a mish mash of people who are affected immediately by the [whatever] and people who are not...like, Bullock's sister but not Bullock in the same car...like John Malkovich's wife, but not Bullock or Malkovich who are both staring at the same thing at the same time, etc. I figured there was a rhyme or reason to this, but we come to find out that virtually any second of staring outside instantly kills the other characters (the homosexual Asian man, the annoying pregnant woman, etc.) -- wasn't the case to start.
Like with many things in this movie, there's no explanation. I don't mind things being left to my imagination, I don't mind a monster movie with no monster, but there's a lot that I'm forced to fill in for a story that I'm paying you to tell me. If you're not going to have much real suspense (finding different ways of not looking out windows for two hours, it turns out, loses its fun at about minute 20), at least have characters that I can be suspenseful for. That mass of completely random humanity in Malkovich's house are there because...? Why his house? Why are there so few others that were able to remain indoors in the same way...? It's not like Malkovich was any better prepared than anyone else for this completely random worldwide, invisible attack.
Malkovich being delightfully Malkovich was one of the bright spots at least...and we learn a little about him along the way. I wouldn't even have minded if he was a little less sloppy in his leadership of the whole thing, but it would have held up an already thin plot even further probably.
The concept of time is lost on me in this and maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention...it's weird for me to ever say that a movie felt rushed, especially one with such a thin screenplay, but from a character standpoint, it certainly seemed that way. The love interest announces itself within, a few hours? A few days? A week? I forget when the frightened supermarket flunkie decides to spill the beans that he works at a supermarket (which was necessary, apparently, despite him wearing his name tag all the live long day (days?))...more on time, why did the river scene need to happen five years later? How on earth is everyone dead (apparently?) but yet there's still some electricity flowing for days, there's a clean water supply, etc. Meanwhile, children who were born after the apocalypse and know no other world, still need it to be explained to them about the blindfolds and the blankets? But why? You guys never had that talk? That's never once come up...that you can't ever look outside for even a second, ever? Seems improbable. In the same vein that when you get close to the [whatever] that you hear voices of past loved ones trying to convince you to look...that never happened ever before in the last five years? You're just now figuring that out. How you add that "rule" at the 110th minute is startling...again, I get the kids needed to grow up I guess or else finding a school for the blind in the middle of rainforest (?) wouldn't have been as impactful...but generally speaking, that scene should have happened about a week or two after this all started...five years? Who is still looking for people on a walkie talkie after five years? You'd think you would have found all the survivors well before then...
The supermarket scene and the ride to get there is good drama and appropriate...it's after that where it starts to really sputter. What happened to the punk ****** and the alleged cop girl who seemed positively incompetent whenever anything remotely serious transpired...? They just drove away and...? They were positively flat, filler characters...clearly would not have been friends with Malkovich, so who knows why they were there in the first place...and just like that, they were gone...bye. Maybe you'll show up in the sequel...?
So Bullock and the kids ride down the river for like two straight days or whatever, birds, who they've managed to keep alive for five years, don't die when the boat flips and everyone almost drowns...just for all to surface just steps away from a Keith Richards community service conquest and the kids get named after deceased characters of some regard to try to give some semblance of normalcy to their lives in this destined-to-fail, how-has-it-not-yet utopia...all right, fine...
When the credits rolled, I was disappointed in the lack of ending...but then I realized I was more disappointed in the lack of middle...I guess because you left more questions than answers behind, you can squeeze a sequel out of it by keeping one strong protagonist and the introduction of a score of new characters from the blind school...I don't know if this movie is anything more than just "The Mist" without the creatures and without the direction though...
