The_MistIt’s been quite rainy here in Middle Tennessee.  It seems to have quit, for now, this afternoon.  So, I thought it would be a good day to suggest The Mist.

The Mist has a certain power to divide people.  Most everyone I know who has seen it either loves it or hates it.  I love it.  I think it’s one of the best Stephen King adaptations, and one of the best horror movies of the decade.  A lot of dislike by detractors is about the ending; I think it fits.

The morning after a destructive storm wreaks havoc on the community, David Drayton goes to the local general store with his son and next door neighbor.  David says goodbye to his wife, not knowing it would be the last time he would see her alive.  As they say their, unknowing, final salutations, they notice a mist moving across the lake.

While shopping for supplies and necessities, the mist rolls in, creating a whiteout.  There’s something in the mist.  Something unnatural, monstrous.  And there is evidence, and victims, to prove it.

The Mist is two things:  a good, old fashioned monster movie, and a portrait of the extremes we humans will go to under duress.  The stakes steadily increase in the grocery store, the suspense winds tighter and tighter, people grow tired and desperate and begin to break.  It’s one big pressure cooker.  Throw in all the monsters outside that want inside, and this movie is the perfect example of Horror realizing its full potential.


The performances are superb all around, great turns beyond the genre norm form Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Andre Braugher, and Jeffrey DeMunn.  The rest of the cast is filled out with so much talent it will blow your mind.  If you have the two-disc DVD, there is a second version of the movie in black and white, the way screenwriter/director Frank Darabont originally intended the film to be seen.

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