The Mist (15)
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The Mist is one of the most downbeat, serious-minded dramas ever to feature gigantic tentacled aliens from another dimension. Adapted from a novella by Stephen King, it's set almost entirely in a rural New England supermarket. An unfeasibly buff artist, Thomas Jane, is stocking up with his son there one morning, when the supermarket is enveloped in a white fog, and we soon see that cheaply computer-generated beasties are lurking within it. Jane and the other shoppers lock the doors.
It sounds as if it should be a B-movie. But Frank Darabont, the writer-director, is going for some of the gravitas he brought to his two previous King adaptations, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. And so The Mist takes more than two hours to examine how easily a civilised group of friends and neighbours can break up into factions and tip into hysteria – especially if one of them, Marcia Gay Harden, is intoxicated by the notion that her well-thumbed Book of Revelation might be telling the literal truth. Some horror aficionados will be irritated by Darabont's decision to turn a Stephen King shocker into a deliberately paced Lord of the Flies. But to me, the film's creeping unease is preferable to horror's current fast-food recipe of blockheaded teenagers being chained up and tortured. It's nice to see a monster movie that's got some meat as well as blood.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments