The Mist (for those of you that don’t already know) is based on King’s story with the same name (you can find it in the collection Skeleton Crew) and is about a group of people captured in a store when a strange mist roles in and covers the world around them. Also, in the mist creatures start moving, trying to get in to the store, one way or another…

It may sound like The Mist is a regular horror movie but actually that’s far from the truth, The Mist is a horror movie and then some. It’s a very character driven movie and it really shows how people react in stressful situations, situation that may very well end up costing you your life.

The lead character David Drayton is excellent played by Thomas Jane and he finds himself being the leader of a small group of people that decide to try and leave the store. This is something that the religious Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) really doesn’t want to see happening though. Using religion she tries to lead the people in the store so salvation by claiming its God that’s punishing them with the mist and the creatures. By doing this she gets the role as the villain of the movie, a role she’s very good in.

We also se Laurie Holden, Toby Jones (perfectly cast as Ollie), Frances Sternhagen, William Sadler and Jeffery DeMunn (both Sadler and DeMunn can also be seen in The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption) in different roles.

The biggest surprise when it comes to the casting though is Andre Braugher as David’s angry neighbor Brent Norton. Andre’s version of Norton is quite different from the written character but still it works extremely well. Andre really gives the character a lot of credibility.

Everyone involved in the movie does a good job and the only problem I have with it, is the special effects. The bugs themselves are very cool and scary as hell but the problem is that when the CGI creatures interact with the real people they really don’t interact. Unfortunately they aren’t quite in sync with each other and that makes it look like the bugs aren’t really on the human but just above it.

However, because The Mist is so much more then just monsters I’m prepared to let this one slide. The movie has so much more and I still really, really enjoy watching it!

Now that The Mist premiers on DVD it’s released in two different versions. One is a single disk that has a commentary track by Frank Darabont and as on the The Green Mile DVD it’s very interesting to listen to what Frank has to say.

We also get a bunch of deleted scenes, also with commentaries, three behind-the-scenes webisodes that has been online earlier and three different trailers for the movie. In addition to that you will also find a documentary about Drew Struzan called Drew Struzan: An Appreciation of an Artist.

And for those of you that hasn’t heard about him earlier, he is a very talented poster artist. He has done a lot of movie posters both for earlier King movies (like The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption) as well as other movies. I bet every one of you have seen one of his posters even if you’re not aware of it.

Alongside the single disk there is also a double disk version that has all the stuff that the single disk has. However, it also has a black and white version of the movie and personally I realized (after just seeing it) that it’s actually a quite different experience to see The Mist in black and white compared to the color version. The black and white version is darker (and I don’t mean picture wise) and gives the movie quite a different feeling and does also include an introduction where Frank talks about why he originally wanted to do the movie in black and white.

And that’s not all. We get a very good making-of documentary called When darkness Come: The Making of The Mist. It’s about 40 minutes long and tells you a lot about how the movie was done. That one, together with Taming the Beast: The making of Scene 35 (this is about the scene when the bugs enter the store), Monster Among Us: A Look at the Creature FX and The Horror of it All: The Visual FX on The Mist really tells you all you need to know about how The Mist was done.

We also get a small 8-pages booklet in which Frank writes about The Mist. The booklet also has two quotes from King about his and Frank’s collaboration.

The Mist is one of the best movies done based on a King story and because of that I was very happy to see that they really used the full capacity of the DVD and got all the good stuff out there for us to see. Oh, and make sure you check out the black and white version of the movie. It’s really quite an interesting experience.

If you want to comment or discuss this review, please mail me.