Horror and science fiction have always been a part of the television canvas, and constant attempts have been made over the years to produce classic entertainment. Some have fallen by the wayside, while others became mainstream phenomena. With “TV Terrors,” we take a look back at the many genre efforts from the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s, exploring some shows that became cult classics, and others that sank into obscurity.
This month we revisit the short-lived small screen adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Mist.”
- Aired in 2017
- Aired on Spike TV
In the age of modern television where every network has sought their own hit genre series in the vein of “The Walking Dead” and “American Horror Story,” tapping into Stephen King’s massive oeuvre for content is just common sense. King has no shortage of short stories, novellas, and massive epics to keep his own streaming service afloat. Sadly, while tapping his writing for content is a good idea in theory, it doesn’t always translate into a surefire hit.
2017 was a tumultuous year for Stephen King content and his fans. On the one hand we got brilliant adaptations like It: Chapter One. On the other hand we got… Spike TV’s “The Mist.” Premiering on the now defunct Spike TV in the summer of 2017, “The Mist” TV series seemed like a great idea at the time. The premise for “The Mist” felt episodic anyway; we’re shown in the finale of the story that the carnage has spread almost worldwide, so we could have had something equally cold and relentless like “The Road” meets H.P. Lovecraft.
In early 2017, the series adaptation landed onto the network with a flurry of viral marketing and exclusive peeks at what promised to be a chaotic extension of the Frank Darabont-directed movie, but its own entity. Spike TV did a bang up job of hyping the series, providing cryptic television ads of the show for the first half of the year. They even allowed viewers to watch the first two episodes on Spike TV’s website, uncut, and with limited commercial breaks. I took advantage, of course.
Set in Bridgeton, Maine, we meet Kevin (Morgan Spector) a somewhat passive man who’s married to Eve (Alyssa Sutherland), his wife who is hiding some kind of mysterious past. They have a daughter named Alex (Gus Birney) who is suffering from her mother’s overbearing behavior. Things take a turn for the worse when during a party Alex is drugged, raped, and blamed. All of this occurs before a mysterious gargantuan mist makes its way into town. When it does quickly consume every crevice of civilization, they’re all split apart, forced to hide in various locales with the mist blocking any and all access between them.
To say “The Mist” was a botched television effort is an understatement. “The Mist” is not just terrible, but it almost seemed to set out to make the viewer miserable. The movie had very solid implications toward the mist being more about the blackness of humanity, and how religion may have been a part in Mrs. Carmody’s survival. But the titular mist presented in the series, we learn gradually over every episode, may not be some kind of portal from another dimension. Instead in the series it’s some kind of otherworldly fog that can judge people based on their sins past and present, and their ideas of morality. The producers work hard to make it abundantly clear that this isn’t the movie. That becomes a fact when Mrs. Carmody herself appears in the very first episode for two minutes and quickly suffers a horrendous death by the mist lurking outside.
The mist almost becomes a non-entity in some episodes where it literally has nothing to do in the show except become a flimsy catalyst for characters to act monstrously moronic. Other times it can literally do anything, including tack on clunky religious symbolism. In one scene a survivor has a bug crawl under his skin only for it to morph out of his back, wings fully spread, presenting a weird angelic image. There’s also the town’s shady priest Father Romanov who, in an attempt to flee, sees the four horsemen of the apocalypse appear in the mist.
The mist does whatever the current episode needs it to, and never has any real rules or limitations to it. And forget all of the vicious wildlife we saw in the movie. The Gray Widowers, the Arachni-Lobsters and the Behemoth are nowhere to be found. Instead now the mist can inexplicably dig into the minds and psyches of its victims and can conjure up scenarios involving their sins, regrets, and horrible secrets. The various characters within the throes of the mist have to either confront these beings, or else suffer its wrath. To what end the mist is conjuring these visions, is anyone’s guess, as it just seems to enjoy messing with these townies.
Is the mist sentient? Is it the product of a portal accidentally opened, or is it the end of humanity and the beginning of judgment day? Kevin struggles to make it to his wife and daughter, and along the way meets up with the unnamed soldier, and a criminal attempting to overcome her past drug abuse. All the while Alex and her mom are stuck in a large mall with other town folks, including the man that might have raped her. It only takes a little over a week for the survivors inside to begin fighting for space and food. Along the way we get to know so much more about the characters than we need to, while their season arcs are played out with ridiculous twists and lingering questions.
Who raped Alex? Who is this soldier? Why should we care? By the fourth episode I was sick of hearing about Alex, her evil best friend, as well as mom Eve’s shady past, and wanted some kind (any kind!) of interesting turn of events. The series jumps back and forth from glacially-paced storytelling to downright absurd plot holes and leaps of logic.
“The Mist” opened with strong ratings initially, and as it dragged on, the viewership dropped more and more. Spike inevitably just axed the whole series after ten episodes and almost no backlash. With the big brand change from Spike TV to the Paramount Network and the complete format reboot, the network cut out a lot of the former series from Spike TV, including “The Mist.”
At least we’ll always have Frank Darabont’s vicious monster movie classic.
Is It On DVD/Blu-Ray/Streaming? Although Spike TV is long gone (including the show’s website), you can still stream full, uncut episodes online through various services like Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Netflix, and Google Play.
