The Mist
The Mist - There have been some good films based on the stories of Stephen King and there have been some really bad ones. The Mist is my personal favorite King story, so I approached the film with some caution. My worries were unfounded. This is one of the good ones.

The night after a violent storm damages his property outside a small Maine town, successful artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) takes his son Billy (Nathan Gamble) into town to purchase supplies. While they're inside the grocery store, the town rapidly becomes shrouded in a dense mist and the dozens of people inside the store find themselves trapped, in danger from both their own hysteria and the deadly creatures that lurk outside in the mist.

In the skilled hands of screenwriter/director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), it's a mostly faithful adaptation of King's novella that deftly captures the author's style. The dark humor, the dialog that sounds natural even as it verges on becoming hyperbolic, the sometimes eccentric characters, and the things that go bump in the night (or the mist). They're all here, faithfully rendered onto the cinema screen.

The film is a fundamentally sound effort that walks the line between the horror and disaster genres, complete with nail-biting suspense and frightening creatures. Oh, the creatures. They may only be CGI, but they're disturbingly alien and you'll struggle to convince yourself that they're not real.

The exception to its fidelity to King's novella is the ending, which replaces the ambiguous one of the source material with something much different and much darker. If the premise sounds like something from The Twilight Zone, it's Darabont's revised ending that really pushes it into classic Rod Serling territory, delivering a climax that's as memorable as it is emotionally devastating. Wow. Just wow.

Cinematographer Ronn Schmidt (Lord of Illusions, television's The Shield) strives for and achieves a hyper-realistic look that makes it seem more documentary than fiction. The production was going to be shot digitally, but it was decided that a grainy film stock would better suit the demands of the story. Production designer Gregory Melton (Bordello of Blood, The Majestic) and costume designer Giovanna Ottobre-Melton (The Rapture) create practical sets and costumes that also have somewhat of timeless quality to them. Cell phones and other technology place the story in the here and now, but visually it could almost be anywhere or anytime. The atmospheric score by Mark Isham (The Majestic, Crash) adds to the dramatic tension, and Darabont also uses the Dead Can Dance song "The Host of Seraphim" for great impact at the end.

Jane delivers a strong performance as David, especially at the end, providing an emotional center for the story. He's well-matched by Andre Braugher as his acrimonious neighbor and Marcia Gay Harden as a dangerously delusional religious fanatic. In general, the rest of the cast are solid and believable, including Gamble as Billy, Laurie Holden as a schoolteacher who develops an emotional bond to David and Billy, Toby Jones as the store's unassuming assistant manager, William Sadler and David Jensen as mechanics, Robert C. Treveiler as the store manager, Jeffrey DeMunn as a local man who first warns the people in the store about the danger in the mist, Frances Sternhagen as a gutsy older woman, Sam Witwer as a soldier who grew up in the town and Alexa Davalos as a store clerk he has a crush on, and Kelly Collins Lintz as David's wife.

The Mist immediately ranks as one of the better adaptations of Stephen King, and it's an entertaining and well-crafted thrill ride from start to finish. And just try to forget the ending when you leave the cinema.

[4 out of 5 stars]