You ready for a fun, rollicking feel-good time at the movies? Well, this makes The Road look hopeful. You would have to be from space, or a right nit wit, to think a film based on a story from the master of horror, Mr. Stephen King, was gonna bring the light and fluffy. But there is a dog! No folks, this is another tale of monsters, but a very poignant one.

Artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) takes his boy and a neighbour (Andre Braugher—may he rest in peace), who doesn’t like him very much, to town to get some supplies and repair gear after a storm the previous night trashed their houses. Just when it seems a thawing between them might happen, a thick rolling mist quickly envelops the town and then things start getting really bad. A bloodied man runs into the supermarket, screaming that there is something out there, and very quickly he’s proven right. Terrified and with no way of communicating beyond the market, opinions on what to do start dividing the group. When a zealot named Mrs. Carmody (a brilliant Marcia Gay Harden) starts to claim prophecy and postulate the will of God, hell hath no fury like hers. David is forced to try and escape to save his boy, but just what is it they are escaping to?

The Mist was Frank Darabont’s third King adaptation, this time swapping out prisons for a supermarket. Whereby, in a sleepy village, they are besieged by an inexplicable mist containing lovecraftian creatures that make short work of anyone who dares venture out. But that isn’t the most potent horror. Darabont takes King’s brilliant premise and turns the horror inward. Forget the tentacled menace that tears folk apart! Those poor disparate characters trapped in the market start turning on each other, when they realise no one is coming to save them. And man-almighty shit really gets dark then.

This is a very good horror movie. It’s thoughtful, it’s surgical and it’s inescapable. Darabont delivers an oppressive soup of claustrophobia, paranoia and terror. The supermarket represents a microcosm of people at large, descending into an every man for themselves sea of despair and self-destruction.

Performances are all fantastic. The gut-wrenching finale let’s Thomas Jane shine like never before (or since). But the aforementioned Gay Harden steals the show. Her unhinged Carmody gives Kathy Bates a nudge for crazy and she’s so good I fist-pumped the air when she meets her fate.

The score by Mark Isham also deserves a tip of the cap. It’s fittingly dour and unrelenting.

Darabont scored three for three with The Mist. Can’t recommend this enough.

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

Home Video Distributor: Lionsgate Films
Available on Blu-ray - October 3, 2023
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos; English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1
Discs: 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc; Four-disc set
Region Encoding: 4K region-free; blu-ray locked to Region A

VIDEO

Well, we get a bit of a treat with this set. Darabont always wanted The Mist to be shot in black and white, but the studio wouldn’t agree. After theatrical release, he got to release a home media version and do just that. Here, in this 4-disc set, we get both the colour version and the black and white. And they’re both very good but not perfect. This is an upscale to 4K. No one has gone back to the camera negatives, and as such there are some tell tale signs. Grain at 4K is sporadically inconsistent. You have to be looking attentively but its there. The black and white version comes out crisper and cleaner looking than the colour version for obvious reasons: easier to hide artefacts in monotones. This is by no means a bad job: more details on faces, clothes, even hair are also noticeably improved. The Dolby VISION/HDR10 is sparingly applied. I think it actually gives more dimension in the black and white than the colour print. It’s a decent job but could have been much better.

AUDIO

I’m usually bitching about studios springing for a full picture upgrade and skimping on the sound mix! This time it’s the reverse! The Mist was given a full Dolby ATMOS 7.1 mix! Amazing from the opening storm, sweating those overheads and ploughing you, ears first, into this incredible immersive experience. With so much of the monsters unseen in the mist, this track sells them in spades. Everything about it is top shelf. Absolutely the highlight of this release.

Supplements:

Commentary:

• With writer/director Frank Darabont and producer Denise Huth
• Commentary Two

Special Features:

You get 4 discs—2 UHDs and 2 blu-rays, each containing the colour/b & w versions at 2160p and 1080p respectively. My copy was a keep case from the US with a slipcover and new artwork for both. I believe there also might have been an American exclusive steelbook release at the same time. The features and commentaries contained therein are, you guessed it, legacy features. Generous, but you’ve had them all before. Snore.

• Eight deleted and extended scenes
• A Conversation With Stephen King and Writer/Director Frank Darabont
• When Darkness Came: The Making of the Mist
• Taming the Beast: The Making of Scene 35
• Monsters Among Us: A Look at the Creature FX
• The Horror of it All: The Visual FX of The Mist
• Drew Struzan: An Appreciation of an Artist
• Three webisodes

	Movie
	Video
	Audio
	Extras
Composite Blu-ray Grade

MPAA Rating: R.
Runtime: 126 mins
Director: Frank Darabont
Writer: Frank Durabant
Cast: Thomas Jane; Marcia Gay Harden; Laurie Holden
Genre: Horror | Sci-fi
Tagline: Fear Changes Everything.
Memorable Movie Quote: "He's a fucking kid. He's supposed to be stupid. What's your excuse?"
Theatrical Distributor: MGM
Official Site:
Release Date: November 21, 2007
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: October 3, 2023.
Synopsis: A freak storm unleashes a species of bloodthirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole up in a supermarket and fight for their lives.