The Mist – Monster Mash

Stephen King’s The Mist

Starring Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, and Toby Jones
Directed by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption)
Rated R for violence, terror and gore, and language
Appropriate for ages 18+
Available March 25, 2008 on DVD

Many years ago director Frank Darabont was weighing his options for his next film.  He had it down to The Shawshank RedemptionThe Mist.  Luckily for us he chose Shawshank, but now, more than 13 years later (yes – it’s been that long), we finally have his vision of the terrifying Stephen King novella.  The story takes place in a small New England town (actually filmed in Louisiana though) where a strange mist has enveloped the area.  A grocery store full of people are too afraid to step outside and with good reason: the mist is filled with horrible monsters hell-bent on eating them.  Due to an end of the world attitude, many of the patrons of the store develop a Lord of the Flies mentality making it almost as hard to survive on the inside.  You would never know from just watching it that this was a small, independent film with a relatively low budget, but according to the documentaries on the disc, this was true guerrilla style film-making, just done right.  The second of the two discs contains the original vision of the director: the film presented in creepy black and white.