Based on a novella by Stephen King, The Mist opens the morning after a sudden thunderstorm in Maine. Artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) steps outside and sees that a tree has crashed through one of his front windows. Meanwhile, his neighbor, attorney Brent Norton (Andre Braugher), stares at the tree that has crushed his car. Though David and Brent are not exactly on friendly terms, the storm briefly brings them together. When David says that he’s going into town to pick up supplies, Norton asks if he can come with him. David’s wife stays back at the house while David drives his son (Nathan Gamble) and Brent to the local grocery store. Before David leaves, he notices a thick mist moving over a nearby lake.
The entire town is without power and the grocery store is crowded. Three soldiers, who are picking up supplies before going on leave, are told that the leave has been abruptly canceled. Once the mist surrounds the store, it soon becomes obvious why that is. There are monsters in the mist and David, Norton, and several others find themselves trapped in the store. Going outside, as some insist on doing, only leads to death at the hands of the Lovecraftian monsters that inhabit the mist.
The Mist was first released in 2007 and I have to admit that I didn’t care much for it the first time that I saw it. I thought that some of the performances were a bit too histrionic and the film’s dark ending was almost too portentous to be credible. When I first saw it, I thought the film was almost trying too hard with the tragic conclusion. However, when I recently rewatched the film, I discovered that it had grown on me. I was better able to appreciate the fact that the monsters were both ludicrous and deadly at the same time. Performances that once seemed over-the-top in 2007 now seemed almost subtle when compared to how I’ve seen people actually behave in the real world over the past ten years. Once you’ve been yelled at for not wearing a mask while jogging, it’s a lot easier to buy the idea of a bunch of people in a grocery store losing their collective minds. Even the film’s dark ending now seemed like the only honest way the film could have ended.
The Mist is a film that plays much differently in a post-COVID world. The idea of innocent people losing their lives because of an accident at a government lab no longer seems all that unbelievable. The argument about whether or not to leave the store mirrored many of the same arguments that I heard during the COVID lockdowns. If Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) and her followers originally seemed like standard Stephen King religious fanatics, Carmody now brings to mind the loathsome Randi Weingarten and her insistence that the only way to defeat COVID was to sacrifice the future of the young. Even the film’s final moments of self-destruction reflected the attitude that many had in 2020, that the situation was hopeless and that there was no escape beyond waiting for the world to end. The final image of one man, driven mad and screaming, brings to mind both the fate of the typical Lovecraftian explorer and also the excesses of the COVID era. That Stephen King continues to be one of the major defenders of these excesses brings a wonderful irony to the film’s subtext.
The Mist has definitely grown on me. It still has its flaws but those flaws are less of a problem now than they were in 2007. In 2007, The Mist seemed overlong. In 2026, that 2-hour running time feels like a relief from the slow-moving miniseries that have become a signature part of the streaming age. Even Thomas Jane’s performance, which seemed rather stiff when I first saw the movie, has improved in hindsight. His tight-jawed stoicism makes his eventual breakdown all the more effective. Everyone reaches the limit, the film seems to be saying.
The Mist is a film that has aged well. It’s one of the better Stephen King adaptations, one that largely stays true to the source material while still having the courage to develop its own identity. The first time I saw it, I was wrong about The Mist. It’s a film that deserves to be remembered as one of the most relevant horror films of the past 20 years.
