The Mist (2017)

This mixing of diverse characters and locations allows relationships and characters to evolve in unexpected ways. The main character in The Mist, however, is fear. Fear begins to take over the town's inhabitants, and how the characters deal with it is startling.

The Mist treats its characters as fully fleshed-out yet flawed human beings who make perfectly rational decisions, even if those decisions end up working out rather poorly in the end. This grounded and realistic introduction to a relatable cast of characters goes a long way toward getting audiences invested in them, all the better to respond to the horror that’s about to come.

The cinematography here is excellent, creating a foreboding atmosphere, and the cast is, by turns, clueless, shrill, heroic, stunned and angry--King’s usual recipe for horror.

I've only seen the first episode, but I'm intrigued. And there are only 10 episodes (unless there's a second season), so it might be worth the time investment.

The Mist comes with a serious lack of comic relief--characters make cracks, but they are on the whole more bitter than funny. Still, it is a well-made, if somewhat dour, creep show that delivers the shocks and awfulness you would be watching for in the first place and manages some decent dialogue in between.

It’s an intriguing setup, forcing unlikely allies together and confining enemies in the same small space. The CGI quality of the mist is sometimes spotty, but the dramatic effect for viewers of suddenly being engulfed in gray gloom is enjoyably squirmy. If Torpe goes too far, it’s with the gore, which tends to be comedically graphic, and ruins the psychological tension the episode has spent time building.

A solid reimagining of the Stephen King novella of the same name, The Mist is an intriguing new example of scary TV.

Bridgeton is too dull, its denizens likewise. The mystery will eventually be settled, some people will get eaten along the way, our heroes will save the day, the fog will disperse, the sun will come out. Ten episodes sure seems like a long road to get there.

Based on just the pilot episode (no others were made available for review), it doesn’t look too bad for re-starters. The acting is no great shakes but the special effects and overall atmosphere are overriding plusses.

This one’s OK, but not great. Transitions in the narrative are a bit clunky and the acting is on B level. Still, it offers some summertime horror thrills.

The pilot episode doesn’t inspire hopes that Torpe can handle a nuanced mix of horror and metaphorical context, but that’s okay--sometimes summer calls only for a simple order of mildly entertaining gore.

So far, The Mist hasn’t given viewers much to care about. It’s all pretty standard plot thickeners. On the other hand, it’s not badly done--atmospheric, so to speak, if unseen horrors are your thing.

If you’ve made a television horror series, you probably don’t want to see it described in a review as comfort food. Yet that’s how the first episode of The Mist registers.

Like King’s last TV series, “Under the Dome,” The Mist would seem to have a short shelf life. One hour with these people and you’ll be rooting for the critters.

A fine cast, but the generic characters and shock-lite scares don't impress. [23 Jun 2017, p.59]

The show still feels dated. ... The gore is effective without ever hitting the level of a feature-film bloodbath. But what will determine whether The Mist is the summer hit it aspires to be isn’t the gore: It’s the effectiveness of the psychological terror. It is moderately successful in the first episode, at least.

Bernstein (Fargo, Better Call Saul) is a good enough director that The Mist pilot gets a couple light scares, but it lacks the brutal simplicity this brand requires. After an hour, they've killed a few people nobody will possibly care about and one animal people probably will care about. But the characters are still scattered through the town and my desire to follow any of them to see how long it takes to bring them together in a contained environment as they ponder the unknowable outside is next to nil.

It’s one of those programs that shows way too much and doesn’t allow for tension to build. We see the impact of the mist way too quickly for a show that now has to maintain suspense over the course of a season. And the special effects are too thin to be actually terrifying.

[The Mist] resurrects many of the small­town tropes that were in “Under the Dome” but with a cast of largely unknowns and B­-movie effects, writing and performances.

The scares (and there are some genuine scares) are few and overly graphic. In tone and aesthetic, it feels like a rehash of CBS’s Under the Dome, another King adaptation that attempted to stretch its source material too far.

Spike's version of The Mist is one dumb piece of work.

Making sense of this mess is probably impossible (either my screener was missing scenes or the plot makes a big and confusing jump in the middle of the premiere) and not worth the effort. Unless, that is, you love seeing bad people get their faces eaten off, or you really, really miss "Under the Dome."

A story packed with one-dimensional characters that behave predictably and speak in platitudes.