VAPOR LOCK
YOU’D need a (large) scorecard to keep track of all the Stephen King novels/novellas adapted to screens both big and small — some better than others. (The King-based movies “IT” and “The Dark Tower” drop later this summer, after King releases his newest novel.)
So here comes “The Mist,” a 10-part Spike series based on King’s novella of the same name and “re-envisioned” by executive producer Christian Torpe. It’s the saga of a small Maine town (natch) enveloped by a deadly fog with the requisite gallery of King characters — the jock, the misfit, the bully, the teen-in-peril, the good guy, the well-meaning parents — who band together when the chips are down to fight the god-awful horror inflicted on them.
And it’s pretty good, to boot. Small town battles deadly ‘Mist’ in King-sized thriller In this case, the horror visited upon the picturesque town of Bridgeville — where high school football rules and everyone gossips — is a mist/fog that’s slowly creeping into town from the nearby forest, wreaking savage death and havoc in its wake. We’re not sure what, yet, the mist has against the good people of Bridgeville, but it’s definitely pissed off; its arsenal of weapons also includes a plague of nasty, killer insects, including ginormous cockroaches. Good times.
In small-town-mentality Bridgeville you’re either in or out, and anyone who doesn’t hew to the “norm” is a shunned outcast.
That includes androgynous high school student Adrian Garf (Russell Posner), whose best friend, moody Alex Copeland (Gus Birney), is raped at her first high school party — allegedly by her crush, good-guy football hero Jay Heisel (Luke Cosgrove). This unfolds against the backdrop of the deadly fog that’s picking people (and beasts) off one by one, including the loyal dog of an amnesiac soldier (who tries too warn everyone, to no avail), the local harridan and a sheriff ’s deputy, who ventures into the mist to take a selfie (badd idea) and meets a gruesome end. Ditto for the husband of Bridgeville’s elderly hippy, Mrs. Raven (Frances Conroy), who meets his maker by a crazed gunman who asks him, “Are you real”? The cast is rounded out by Alex’s parents — softie dad Kevin (Morgann Spector) and her strict mother, Eve (Alyssa Sutherland), who’s got “a reputation” in town. Alex, in that vicious teen way, calls her mom a “slut,” but you know they’ll heal that breach when the chips are down. The cinematography here is excellent, creating a foreboding atmosphere, and the cast is, by turns, clueless, shrill, heroic, stunned andnd angry — King’s usual recipe for horror. I’ll be going back into “The Mist” to see what happens next.