The mist rolling over the lake gave me more creeps than John Carpenter's The Fog (although the scene that got me the most was when the air raid siren goes off as the mist hurls itself towards the supermarket).

The Mist and The Stand were, and probably still are, my favorite Stephen King stories. For every good-to-great adaption -- Carrie, The Shining, The Dead Zone, and a handful of others, there is a mountain of stinkers -- Sleepwalkers, Silver Bullet, The Mangler, Maximum Overdrive (guess what? King can't direct) and many, many others.

I was disappointed by the mediocre Stand series of the 90's but when Frank Darabont of The Shawshank Redemption was announced, I was stoked. And boy did Darabont deliver one of the best apocalyptic movies of all time.

Just like the underlying King story, this is mostly a character study of a bunch of townies and out-of-towners that find themselves stuck in a supermarket surrounded by a super-thick mist with nasty shit in it. The situation then devolves into an adult "Lord of the Flies" -- where you gonna go when shit from another dimension is a foot away in the fog?

Some of the actors are just fantastic. Thomas Jane, fresh off The Punisher, is excellent as the natural lead of the "reasonable people." Marcia Gay Harden kills it as Mrs. Cormendy, the whacked out religious nut who leads the "gullible" people (and what a metaphor that is now for today's whackadoodle Q and anti-abortion quacks.

And there were some early versions of Carol and Andrea from The Walking Dead -- methinks they passed their audition.

Some bad CGI (the big tentacle thing), great CGI (the Lovecraftian kaiju), and fantastic practical effects (bugs and buzzards) were accompanied by a decent amount of gore.

And that fucking ending. I hated it when I first saw it in 2007 when my sons were 5, 7, and 10 as I think it violated my "Dad" principles. Now I respect the hell out of it for GOING there, as uncomfortable as it is.

Can someone please give Darabont The Stand or The Dark Tower to adapt instead of entrusting it to plebes?!?!