The Mist: Stephen King

I went to the cinema today to see 30 Days Of Night and we arrived after lunch about 30 minutes before the movie started so this guy came up to me while I was walking around the lobby and he asked if I wanted to do a survey for him. At first he asked me if I knew a list of actors/actresses/directors and then what type of genres I enjoy coming to the theatre to watch. Then he gave me a list of some movies that will be coming out and one was The Mist(The Steven King Novel). He then proceeded to have me watch this preview that showed what the movie was about and he asked me what I thought of the preview and from the preview what I thought the movie was going to be about. Then he had me watch it again and he told me the company wanted to re-work the preview and asked me what I thought was good in the preview and what I thought would be taken out. I thought it was a pretty interesting survey. Has anyone else had someone approach them about a survey like this before you enter the movie you are going to see?


BTW: The movie The Mist looked like it could be quite suspenseful and a pretty good story.

I've seen the trailer for it and I am very interested...
I read the story and thought it was very good, and the trailer I saw seemed to be following it pretty close... suspenseful is a good word for the story

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I really like Stephen King as an author. I feel like his work have been typically poorly made into films, with a few exceptions, but from what I know of The Mist, I haven't read it yet but I want to, I think that it might be one that is easier to make into a good film. I am looking forward to it because it is a King adaptation, but I hope that I like it for more then just the fact it is an adaptation.

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Stephen King is one of the best author of suspense/horror novels and i like his books a lot. I just hope that the movie will stick to his writings

Stephen King is my favorite horror author, but I'm always disappointed with his movie adaptations. His writing does best with a fertile imagination and they don't translate well to the screen, even when keeping close to the original story.

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The first trailer looked terrible. But the second makes it look amazing. I'm actually looking forward to this now.

And I think it's rated R!

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The Mist Trailer 2
The Mist Trailer 3
The Mist Trailer 4

Thanks for the links jrs... I will definitely watch this one..

I concur that King's horror stories rarely translate well to the screen. The Shining wasn't bad but that was due mostly to Nicholson's performance (which felt very different from the book). But most others were far better in print than in celluloid. 1408 had the feel of the short story but the ending was different in the movie (it was like they tried to explain or wrap up something King wanted to leave unexplained).

His other stories seem to translate better (the non-horror ones): The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, etc.

Still, I may see this one, except that at first I thought it was a reworking (again) of The Fog.

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Well, the Russian trailer was interesting. Not nearly as scary, though.

The first trailer I saw showed no creatures, just a lot of, well, mist, with scary "what's out there?" stuff. Now the trailers are getting more gross and revealing. It changes the whole feel of the movie, so I can see why they re-did the trailer. I've been to a few movies whose trailers were way off in the way the movie was portrayed (Signs, Lady in the Water being two examples that come to mind). In the case of Signs it was a great movie anyway, but the Lady in the Water trailers made it seem like a horror movie. Bad marketing, IMHO.

We'll have to wait and see how good and/or accurate the marketing is for this movie....

It has been a while since I read this story, but I can say that from what I've seen in the trailers... especially in numbers 2 & 4, that the movie does seem to be following it pretty close. Just how close it ends up following, especially the ending, will be interesting to see. The story is 133 pages in the compilation Skeleton Crew, so I don't know how many changes/additions they would need to make on that, if any, to make it into a feature length movie.

Aha, thanks for the heads up on where to find the story. I own most Stephen King books but often, finding stuff in his compilations can get fuzzy. I'm a big fan but not a fanatic so I don't have much of that kind of info memorized ... yet.

Watched The Mist - a movie adapted from a Stephen King novella, and wow - I must say, definitely a rent-worthy movie, if you did not see it already. However, in all of my many impressions from this movie the largest one that lept out at me was the one at

Thankfully, that was not the case, but I was really worried for quite some time there, to the degree I was even thinking about commenting on how far we've fallen as a society, if we come to a place where we feel such behavior is normal and warranted. Look, I dont know what they did in barbaric times, nor do I ever hope to find out - still in all, I do hope that I have enough HOPE not to commit that one act. We all gotta die. Me, you, everyone alive. And no. You have to face yours, same way I have to face mine. God forbid you would have escaped death for a little longer, and now I have to live with this horrendous act on my conscience.

Here, I thought that the censure for euthansia in the violent clime of 30 Days of Night was a little harsh given the circumstances, but the vantage point of The Mist, however, turned out to be an even harsher censure than the you see in 30 Days of Night. Josh Hartnett's character comes to the house of his deputy to find his deputy alive and well, with several untouched dead bodies in the master bed. It appears that the deputy, knowing that certain death was in store for his family, and in order to save the wife and 2 girls from butchery by the vampires, the Deputy laid them in bed and shot them 1 by 1. The grave horror of it is that everyone finds him horribly guilty for this act, and at the same time everyone else is horribly glad they have no children, and wonders if they would not have done the same. Josh's wife even comments on this fact. The sense you get from 30 Days is that the deputy is the lowest of the low, and will die for his despicable yet compassionate act.

It made me think - what is mercy in this type of scenario? what is compassion? And Stephen King dealt with it, and how!

I also thought he did an outstanding job of painting a warning about the regression into primitivism under harsh circumstances and the dangers of extreme religion (though I have no problem with religion, and am myself a Christian, and consider myself pretty devout - and I have yet to meet someone like THAT woman), and in some way distancing himself from being solely painted as having a religious message. He did good.

Thomas Jane needed a hug.

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Mack, I hate to burst your bubble, but King didn't deal with this aspect of the movie -- because the ending of the novella was entirely different. Entirely. Please read it before "crediting" King with this ending.

As for your comments, I think it's way off base to state that such behavior is somehow classified as "normal" in this movie. It's the furthest thing from normal, and I think that's entirely clear by how it's handled and acted. The creatures were coming (or so they thought). He acted as he did so that they would not suffer a more horrific death. He was willing to 'sacrifice' himself to that horrific death because there weren't enough bullets.

It was a one-time situation, not normal and not societal in scope.

Having said that, I do understand your concern. But I didn't feel for a moment that this movie was advocating euthanasia in general. Far from it (judging by the ending itself and the situation at large).

I took more issue with the portrayal of faith/Christianity (which is quite similar in the novella, BTW). It's shallow, inconsistent, and like you, I have yet to meet anyone called a Christian who is anything like that character. They weren't portraying her as some sort of cultist (the only types I would think fit into her worldview), and so the audience is left to think this is how Christians in general are? Please! It was offensive and stupid and beyond stereotypical.

Ok, good to know. I have not read the book, and am only speaking to the movie - the movie itself credits Stephen King. Not that big a deal to me whethe the director or SK gets the credit - but, if its good, I may read the novella.

Austruck, I think you may have misunderstood my post, because as I winded through my thinking, I eventually stated that, indeed, The Mist was NOT advocating euthanasia, but was censuring it - harshly. You seem to have focused on the part where I stated that I was (at first) worried that it was advocating it.

We are not in disagreement here on that point, dude.