The Mist

Leave it to Frank Darabont to create a very effective adaptation of Stephen King story. He gave us one of the all time great movies with "The Shawshank Redemption," and you can still catch it on TBS or TNT every other week. Frank also did "The Green Mile" which was also really good, even if it was not quite as effective as Shawshank was. Now Frank gives us "The Mist," and whereas the other movies he did were based on King's "non-horror stories" (prison, however, is a horror story unto itself), this is Frank's first time dealing with one of King's full out horror stories. But he brings it to life in a way only Frank Darabont could.

"The Mist" takes place (as just about all of Stephen King's stories do) in Maine. We see our main character, David Drayton (Thomas Jane), doing his work as a graphic artist on something that appears to be right out of "The Dark Tower." There is also another work he did that is directly from "John Carpenter's The Thing." In establishes what this character does, but it also serves to establish the kind of movie this is. It's a movie that deals with people who we recognize in the real world, and from the small towns many of us grow up in.

There is a storm that launches a tree into his work studio, and he ends up going into town with his son the next day to pick up supplies. David ends up taking along his neighbor Brent Norton (Andre Braugher) to the nearby supermarket, regardless of the fact that his tree fell down on David's boathouse and completely destroyed it. But while at the market, a mist starts to blanket the town in almost zero visibility. A local townsman named Dan ends up rushing into the store crying out,

"There's something in the mist!"