Many a filmmaker has come a serious cropper in the attempt to translate Stephen King’s page-turning horror fiction to the screen; for every Shining, there’s a Lawnmower Man, for every Dead Zone, a Silver Bullet. Director Frank Darabont, however, has now scored an impressive hat-trick, following the hugely popular Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile with an often superb screen version of the author’s 1980 novella The Mist.


The film’s premise is quite as simple as that of the source mat­erial: after a freak storm trashes his house, David Drayton (Thomas Jane) takes his young son into town to pick up some supplies.