Part of Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair
David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his young son Billy (Nathan Gamble) are among a large group of terrified townspeople trapped in a local grocery store by a strange, otherworldly mist. David is the first to realize that there are things lurking in the mist… deadly, horrifying things… creatures not of this world. Survival depends on everybody in the store pulling together… but is that possible, given human nature? As reason crumbles in the face of fear and panic, David begins to wonder what terrifies him more: the monsters in the mist—or the ones inside the store, the human kind, the people that until now had been his friends and neighbors?
Frank Darabont’s (THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, THE GREEN MILE) chilling Stephen King adaptation is presented here in the director’s preferred version—in black and white—for maximum bleakness.
“One of the scariest King films since Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING…. By catching his protagonists between equally oppressive horrors, Darabont successfully finds the squelchy heart of King's story, and keeps it pumping until the ugly end.” —Tasha Robinson, The A.V. Club (Nov 21, 2007) “While THE MIST takes on a whole new perspective following the 2020 pandemic, it still retains the weight and importance of its horror laced within human reaction and psyche…. Beyond the creatures and the supernatural, there is a realism to the film that speaks volumes. As THE MIST concluded, I found myself wanting to watch it again. Nuanced and deeply layered, [it] proves itself not only to be a well-crafted horror but an example of the true power of adaptations.” —Stephanie Archer, Film Inquiry
