Stephen King is the master of horror, but he also has a big heart. With ghosts and vampires and killer clowns, to name a few, King has thrown all sorts of horrid situations at his characters over the years, but he also writes them with a great deal of compassion and sincerity, often underlining the perseverance of ordinary people put into extraordinary circumstances. And in 2007, one of his stories of this kind was adapted into a feature film with an ending so macabre and bleak that even King didn’t go there. The Mist was directed by a frequent King collaborator, Frank Darabont, who also helmed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Darabont had accomplished an incredible feat, turning these two more dramatic King stories into massive movies that were hits with audiences. But he finally dipped into King’s morbid world of horror with The Mist, based on a 1980 novella King first published in a larger anthology book containing horror stories from a variety of authors.
