The MistFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Mist" is a horror novella by the American author Stephen King, in which the small town of Bridgton, Maine is suddenly enveloped in an unnatural mist that conceals otherworldly monsters. It was first published as the last and longest story of the 1980 horror anthology Dark Forces. A lightly re-edited version was included in King's 1985 short-story collection Skeleton Crew. The story is the longest entry in Skeleton Crew and occupies the first 155 pages. To coincide with the theatrical release, The Mist was republished as a stand-alone novella by Signet. The novella has been adapted as a computer game, an audio play and a movie.
Plot summary:
The morning after a violent thunderstorm, a thick unnatural mist quickly spreads across the small town of Bridgton, Maine, reducing visibility to near-zero and concealing numerous species of bizarre creatures which viciously attack any human who ventures out into the open. The source of the fog and its inhabitants is never revealed, but strong allusions are made to an inter-dimensional rift caused by something known second-hand to the townsfolk as "The Arrowhead Project," long rumored to be conducted at a nearby top-secret military facility.
The bulk of the story details the plight of a large group of people who become trapped while shopping in the town supermarket, among them a commercial artist named David Drayton (the story's narrator), Drayton's young son Billy, and their estranged neighbor Brenton Norton, who accompanied them into town after his car was smashed by a tree. Also trapped in the market are a young woman named Amanda Dumfries and two soldiers from The Arrowhead Project; the soldiers' eventual joint suicide lends some credence to the theory of the Project being the source of the disaster.
Soon after the mist comes, something plugs the store generator's exhaust vent. When a young bagboy named Norm steps outside to fix the problem, he is pulled into the mist by a swarm of tentacles. Drayton, who witnesses Norm's death along with the store's assistant manager, Ollie Weeks, tries to convince the other survivors of the danger lurking outside. Norton and a small group of others (dubbed "The Flat Earth Society" by Drayton) refuse to believe and venture out into the mist to find help, where they are killed by a huge, unseen creature. This, along with a deadly incursion into the store by a creature resembling a pterosaur and a disastrous expedition to the pharmacy next door, causes a rise in paranoia and panic amongst the remaining survivors. This spiraling breakdown leads to the rise to power of a religious zealot named Mrs. Carmody, who convinces a majority of the survivors that these events fulfill the biblical prophecy of the end times, and that a human sacrifice must be made to save them from the wrath of God. Drayton and Ollie attempt to lead their remaining allies in a covert exit from the market, but are stopped by Mrs. Carmody, who orders her followers to seize her chosen victims: Billy and Amanda. Ollie shoots Carmody dead, scattering the mob, but en route to Drayton's car, he is in turn killed by a large lobster-like creature. Drayton, Billy, Amanda, and elderly school teacher Hilda Reppler reach the car and leave Bridgton, driving south for hours through a mist-shrouded, monster-filled New England. After finding a refuge for the night, Drayton listens to a radio, and through the overwhelming static possibly hears a single word: "Hartford". With that one reed of hope, he prepares to drive on into an uncertain future.
Influences:
According to King in the Notes section in Skeleton Crew, the inspiration for The Mist came from a real life experience. While there were no strange creatures, a massive thunderstorm much like the one which opens the story occurred where King lived at the time. The day after the storm, he went to a local supermarket with his son. While looking for hot dog buns, King imagined a "big prehistoric bird" flapping around in the store. By the time the two were in line to pay for their purchases, King had the basis for his story: survivors trapped in a supermarket surrounded by unknown creatures.
While experiencing the atypical spring weather which precedes the storm, some characters make reference to the real-life Great Blizzard of 1888, which devastated much of the northeastern United States.
In the second issue of the Marvel Comics series The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born (a project overseen by King), the short prose story at the end of the book details events similar to those that occur in The Mist. In the story, a beam quake (caused by an attempt to tear down the Dark Tower) splits the Earth, and from within the split rises a thick mist inhabited by dark creatures that have escaped from todash space into the real world. This phenomenon, known in the Dark Tower universe as a thinny resembles the mist from the The Mist.
The 1996 tokusatsu series Ultraman Tiga features an episode entitled "The Mist", which uses a plot heavily based on the story, with one character even alluding to it's similarities to a "story she once heard".
The Mist bears resemblance to the earlier H.F. Arnold short story "Night Wire", in which a radio operator details how a malevolent mist falls over a city, containing creatures that consume townspeople "piecemeal."
The story makes brief mention of the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, as the creatures and the concept of their origin in another dimension share a similarity with themes which commonly appeared in Lovecraft's writing. King has widely praised Lovecraft as a horror writer and has directly borrowed from him in several other stories.
Characters and creatures:
This is a list of brief contextual descriptions of characters from the novel.
Human characters
David Drayton
Husband of Stephanie, father of Billy. A moderately successful commercial artist, David is the narrator of the story and one of the few survivors as the story ends.
Billy Drayton
Billy is David's five-year-old son. He is cared for by his loving father, David, during their ordeal in the supermarket. Billy is traumatized by the experience, although David is fairly successful at shielding his son from any direct violence.
Stephanie Drayton
Stephanie is David's wife. David and Billy leave her at home when they go to the supermarket. Since she was working outside and one of their home's windows was broken during the storm, she had little chance of surviving the monsters.
Brent Norton
David Drayton's neighbor, Brent refuses to believe what is happening. Prior to the story, he had lost a property dispute with Drayton, creating a bitter relationship between the two. His wife died a few months prior to the events of the story. He eventually leads a small group of nonbelievers into the mist,where a large, unseen creature kills them.
Ollie Weeks
The assistant manager of the supermarket. Ollie remains among the most sane of the survivors, accepting the truth about the mist and trying to keep the survivors calm. He is part of the pharmacy expedition and survives it. He kills Mrs. Carmody in order to prevent an imminent human sacrifice, but is killed minutes later during the climactic escape attempt by a lobster-creature which tears him in half with one of its claws.
Mrs. Carmody
An elderly townswoman with a borderline reputation as a witch and an extreme belief in a bloodthirsty God. She actively thrives in the situation, starting the story as a near-pariah, and eventually convincing a large faction of the survivors that a human sacrifice must be made to clear away the mist. She is shot and killed by Ollie.
Amanda Dumfries
A young woman trapped in the supermarket. She has a husband who is out of town and encouraged her to carry a pistol while he was away. Ollie Weeks uses the weapon to kill Mrs. Carmody. She is one of the last main characters seen.
Bud Brown
The manager of the store, he maintains a relative degree of sanity by, as Drayton puts it, assuming the role of "Protector Of The Store". He does not join the final escape attempt and his fate is uncertain.
Mike Hatlen
A town selectman, Mike becomes one of the leaders in the market. He is killed by a "spider-web" during the expedition to the pharmacy, which cuts through his throat.
Dan Miller
An "out of towner" who owns a summer home in the area, Dan also becomes a leader in the market. He is killed by a spider-like creature in the mist during the expedition to the pharmacy, which completely encases him in its acidic web.
Hattie Turman
A middle-aged woman, she looks after Billy during the times that David is otherwise occupied. She is killed by a spider-creature during the final escape.
Hilda Reppler
An elderly, but tough and competent, school teacher, Mrs. Reppler proves to be one of the most capable of those trapped in the market, using cans of Raid as weapons against the Mist creatures. She is part of the pharmacy expedition and is one of the last main characters seen.
Norm
An 18-year-old bag boy, he goes outside to check the generator. He is killed by a multi-tentacled predator.
Jim Grondin
One of two men who sends Norm the bag boy to his death. Consumed by guilt, he drinks heavily. He is later killed by an unseen predator during the expedition to the pharmacy.
Myron LaFleur
Jim Grondin's friend, who also contributed to Norm's death. He becomes one of Mrs. Carmody's followers. His fate is uncertain.
Ambrose Cornell
An elderly man, Cornell flees back into the market during the climactic escape sequence, and is left behind.
Buddy Eagleton
One of the stock boys. He is killed during the expedition to the pharmacy when a spider-creature wraps an acidic web-strand around his leg, causing him to bleed to death.
Mr. McVey
The store's butcher, who cooks for the survivors; Drayton surmises the smell of rotting meat finally breaks his sanity. He becomes one of Mrs. Carmody's followers, and is last seen as a catatonic wreck.
Tom Smalley
A survivor inside the store who is unlucky enough to be under the window where the pterodactyl comes in. He is then killed by it.
Creatures
* Numerous squid-like tentacles which killed Norm in the storage room. The suction cups on the tentacle serve as mouths, consuming Norm as the tentacles envelop him.
* Small flying creatures between two and four feet long which swarm over the store windows at night. These creatures have pink, burnt-flesh colored skin, and their eyes are on stalks protruding from their heads.
* Albino pterodactyls which pluck the aforementioned creatures off of the store windows. One enters through a hole in the store's display window and kills a man named Tom Smalley. Similar creatures appear in the waste lands outside Lud in The Waste Lands.
* Spider-like predators which hunt by scent. These have the ability to project acidic "spider-webs" which can burn through materials like cloth and flesh. They claim the lives of Jim Grondin, Buddy Eagleton, Dan Miller, Mike Hatlen, Hattie Turman and several patrons of the next-door pharmacy.
* A creature with a scorpion-like segmented body with lobster claws that kills Ollie Weeks by ripping him in half. One of these creatures may have killed Brent Norton and his followers. These may be the "lobstrosities" that appear in The Drawing of the Three.
* A colossal behemoth with six legs. Other than the legs, with hundreds of the aforementioned small flying creatures attached to them, this creature is unseen. Although the creature's exact size is never specified, David gets the impression that its size would make a blue whale resemble a trout if both were posed together, and its weight is sufficient to leave six-foot-deep footprints in solid concrete the size of a large SUV.
* A giant living kite glimpsed flying through the mist.
* A big green dragonfly which alights on the car.
The Mist [Blu-ray]From Weinstein Company
Average customer review:
Product Description
From legendary frightmaster Stephen King and 3-time Oscar-nominated director Frank Darabont* (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) comes "one of the scariest King films since Stanley Kubrick's The Shining" (Tasha Robinson, The Onion A.V. Club). After a mysterious mist envelopes a small New England town, a group of locals trapped in a supermarket must battle a siege of otherworldly creatures...and the fears that threaten to tear them apart. Starring Thomas Jane (The Punisher) and Oscar winner* Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic River) in one of the year's most talked-about performances, The Mist is riveting, with "tension like an ever-tightening clamp" (Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune).
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #208 in DVD
- Released on: 2008-09-16
- Rating: R (Restricted)
- Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
- Formats: Subtitled, Widescreen
- Original language: English
- Subtitled in: English, Spanish
- Number of discs: 1
- Running time: 126 minutes
The Mist Perfected!!
Any bad reviews written about this movie is written under lack of intellegence and understanding. This movie was crafted just as well as Shawshank and Green Mile and the performance were equal. The problem people have with tis movie is internal. Steven King himself has declared this movie to be amazing. The book had no ending. Steven King said he couldn't think of one. Frank and Steven got together and worked long and hard on what the ending could be. They both decide that this was the only way. Steven King also stated that he would have ending the book the same way if the idea had come to him.
I love this movie. It is not a horror movie. It's more of a suspense drama. The situations (if real) were perfectly illistrated. I enjoyed every minute of it. If you haven't seen this movie you need to. I suggest watching first before you buy it because it is not a happy movie and I know that some people with strong opinions that don't care for things that might be different than their own point of view might not like it. But it is a masterpiece.
Don't take anyone's word for it, just watch it.
Would rate 0 stars if i could
First off I am a big fan of Stephen King, so when I heard that the Mist was being made into a movie I was excited. Let alone it was being directed by Frank Darabont, who did The Green Mile and Shawshank (2 Great movies)
This movie had to be the worst movie ever made, Bad acting, horrible special effects (Made Special effects from the 80's look good)
They stayed close to the book to a point but the end of the movie ruined everything.
It was a very bad movie do not waste your time nor money in seeing this movie!
Brutal Monstrosity!
The Good Things:
-It seems to be influenced by HP Lovecraft; they are all otherworldly bugs and shapeless monsters. Definitely some of the freakiest monsters ever put on the screen.
-Also, special effects are pretty good.
-There are only a few bad scenes of violence, but they are exceptionally brutal, and serve to make everything scarier!
-Even scarier than the monsters are the people. Most of the movie focuses on how everybody reacts to the situation, and there are many mixed and wild reactions. Many people act dumb and irrationaly, and few are sensible. This makes for very realistic and intense drama.
-As a whole, it is a deep, brutal exploration of human nature in an extreme apocalyptic situation. The whole film is very thought-provoking.
-Most of the story is close to the original novella by Stephen King; only the ending is different (see below).
-It's not corny or cliched like some of the other Stephen King works.
The Bad Things
-The ending was exceptionally brutal, and can be seen as either good or bad. I think it could have had a happier ending, but as it is in the film, it does leave you thinking and feeling bitter.
-On the minus side, the ending is radically different from the original novella.
-Sometimes, you just want to punch these stupid characters in the face (then again, this could be a good thing too, because the drama really absorbs the audience).
This definitely goes above and beyond my expectations. It's not the typical horror flick; it's an intense thought-provoking study of people under pressure. The result is explosive, and unfortunately, highly believable. Even though it is stylistically similar to "Dreamcatcher," or "The Thing," it is more akin to "Children of Men" or "Pan's Labyrinth." Because of this, it is frightening on all levels, and I would consider this to be one of the best Stephen King-inspired films ever made.
Special features include two versions of the film (the original theatrical cut and the black-and-white version, which is pretty interesting), deleted scenes, several fascinating featurettes, webisodes, and trailers. Video and sound quality were good on DVD, and should be great on Blu-Ray.
If this review has not been helpful, feel free to comment on how I can improve.
The Mist (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
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