10 Stephen King Movies To Watch Before It
1. The Mist
Like King’s novella, The Mist is essentially a 50s monster movie given a modern spin, but director Frank Darabont gives the material a more downbeat feel and adds what turns out to be one of the movie’s most memorable scenes – a grim ending that’s very different from the source material.
The perfect post-9/11 monster movie, the movie brings on the apocalypse not by imitating George Romero’s vision but by throwing regular people (flawlessly played by a terrific cast) into an irregular situation and watching them react.
One thing you notice about The Mist now is how many of the film’s actors – Melissa McBride, Laurie Holden, Jeffrey DeMunn, Sam Witwer, Juan Gabriel Pareja and Tiffany Morgan – later appeared in The Walking Dead, but this is a much darker vision of humanity than appears on AMC. The real horror in this film isn’t the monster lurking in the mist but the reactions of the people trapped inside a grocery store, whose behavior becomes increasingly erratic as the world falls apart.
Darabont has nothing to do with the upcoming TV series based on The Mist, however, which the producers call a "re-imagining" of King's story. We'll find out if it retains the spirit of the source material when the show premieres on June 22.