Series seeks to find right level of terror

“The Mist” will premiere at 10 tonight on Spike TV.

“It’s coming! It’s coming,” screams a disoriented military veteran, and boy is it ever.

Stephen King’s 1980 novella “The Mist” already served as the basis for a 2007 feature film of the same name, written by Frank Darabont (“The Walking Dead”).

Tonight, it premieres as a drama series on the cable network Spike TV.

The 10-episode series centers on the small town of Bridgeville, Maine, where the school board has decreed that students can learn a few things in sex education, but not too much.

Eve Copeland (Alyssa Sutherland) is pressing the board to be more open-minded.

She’s also obsessed with making sure her own 16-year-old daughter, Alex (Gus Birney), doesn’t grow up too fast. Alex’s dad, Kevin (Morgan Spector), is more lenient, especially when Alex wants to go to a party because her current crush, football star Jay Heisel (Luke Cosgrove), will be there.

At a glance

Alex is convinced the party will be dangerous for her daughter, but there’s something else far more dangerous going on in the woods and mountains surrounding the town.

Bryan Hunt (Okezie Morro), a homeless military veteran with amnesia, has experienced it firsthand and rushes into town to warn everyone, only to be thrown in jail as mentally unstable.

The townsfolk should have heeded Hunt’s warning. A thick mist descends from the mountains, winds through the woods and invades the town, bringing all sorts of creatures — both seen and unseen — and all are predatory.

The gore is effective without reaching the level of a bloodbath. But what will determine whether “The Mist” is a hit isn’t the gore: It’s the effectiveness of the psychological terror. It is moderately successful in the first episode, at least.