The Mist | |
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Genre | |
Created by | Christian Torpe |
Based on |
The Mist by Stephen King |
Starring |
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Composers | |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 10 ( list of episodes) |
Production | |
Producers |
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Cinematography | André Pienaar |
Running time | 47 minutes |
Production company | Dimension Television |
Original release | |
Network | Spike |
Release | June 22 August 24, 2017 | –
The Mist is an American science fiction- horror thriller television series developed by Christian Torpe. It is based on the 1980 horror novella of the same name by author Stephen King. [1] The series aired for one 10-episode season on Spike from June 22 to August 24, 2017. Spike later cancelled the series on September 27 the same year.
An unexplained mist slowly envelops the town of Bridgeville, Maine, creating an almost impenetrable barrier to visibility. The residents of the town soon learn the situation is even more precarious as unexplained anomalies and phenomena in the mist attack and kill most who enter it, trapping several groups of people in a shopping mall, a church, and a hospital. Eventually, people begin to see apparitions in the mist from their past, fears, or guilt that help or kill them depending on how they react.
No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | U.S. viewers (millions) | |||
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1 | "Pilot" | Adam Bernstein | Christian Torpe | June 22, 2017 | 0.684 [4] | |||
Kevin Copeland and his wife Eve live in a small town with their daughter Alex. Alex is raped at a party, and her best friend Adrian tells her it was Jay Heisel, the quarterback of the football team and the boy she had a crush on. A thick mist soon sweeps through town, something deadly inside of which begins killing people. Eve and Alex become trapped at the local mall, while Kevin is stuck at the police station with Jay's father, Sheriff Connor Heisel, and Adrian. Connor soon leaves Kevin and Adrian and goes to the local church, where Nathalie Raven—whose husband was killed in the mist—and Father Romanov are hiding with several other townsfolk. Kevin and Adrian release two prisoners from the local jail: paranoid soldier Bryan Hunt, an amnesiac who discovered the mist and came to town to warn everyone about it, and mysterious drug addict Mia Lambert. At the mall, Alex is disturbed to find Jay is also trapped there. | ||||||||
2 | "Withdrawal" | David Boyd | Story by : Christian Torpe Teleplay by : Peter Macmanus | June 29, 2017[a] | 0.496 [6] | |||
At the mall, manager Gus Bradley takes control and decides to send someone down a hallway filled with mist to try to make contact using an emergency radio. Eve is chosen, but another survivor, Clint, goes with her, despite his friends' obvious worry. While attempting to make contact, Clint turns on Eve, who is then forced to defend herself against him and leave his body behind. At the police station, Kevin, Adrian, Bryan, and Mia escape and make their way to the church. Nathalie, still grieving her husband, starts to mentally unravel while Bryan and Mia strike up an unlikely friendship. Connor continues to mistrust Kevin and his group, having already re-arrested both Bryan and Mia. At the mall, Jay's restless wanderings find that Clint's friends have killed themselves. | ||||||||
3 | "Show and Tell" | Nick Murphy | Peter Biegen | July 6, 2017[a] | 0.428 [7] | |||
Kevin pleads with Connor to release Bryan and Mia. Connor indignantly provokes Kevin into assaulting him instead, giving Connor an excuse to arrest him. A distraught Nathalie attempts to kill herself; Mikhail stops her, only to be killed himself. Nathalie claims to have seen God. Adrian tricks Father Romanov and steals his keys. The three now free with Adrian, they escape the church. The mall group finds dog tags on the bodies of Clint's friends. They are ex-military. Wes, Clint's last remaining friend, is also military, but he denies any knowledge. Eve and Alex find a "Jay-free" area of the mall, despite Jay's occasional bids to convince Alex that he did not rape her. Ted and Vic, the game store employees, decide to use the dead bodies as bait. When the others discover this, the majority group decides to establish rules. When someone suggests throwing out those who are a danger to the group, Eve, Alex and a few others secede to another part of the mall. Alex comes up with the idea to release balloon SOS messages. | ||||||||
4 | "Pequod" | T.J. Scott | Andrew Wilder | July 13, 2017 | 0.487 [8] | |||
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5 | "The Waiting Room" | Richard Laxton | Amanda Segel & Christian Torpe | July 20, 2017 | 0.538 [9] | |||
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6 | "The Devil You Know" | James Hawes | Noah Griffith & Daniel Stewart | July 27, 2017 | 0.411 [10] | |||
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7 | "Over the River and Through the Woods" | Matthew Penn | Daniel Cameron Talbott | August 3, 2017 | 0.400 [11] | |||
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8 | "The Law of Nature" | Guy Ferland | Story by : Amanda Segel Teleplay by : Andrew Wilder & Christian Torpe | August 10, 2017 | 0.374 [12] | |||
On the way to the mall, the group drives by Adrian's house, and he goes to check on his parents while Mia and Jonah siphon more gas. Adrian finds that his mother is dead, and gets into an argument with his father. While siphoning gas, Mia and Jonah have sex. Kevin finds Vic, having survived his banishment, who tells him about what is happening in the mall. After Adrian's father calls him out for his bisexuality, Adrian kills him. Kevin enters the house, where Adrian has cut his arm, claiming his father attacked him and he killed him in self-defense. Kevin, looking for something to treat Adrian’s wound, finds Adrian's mother's medication, and Adrian breaks down and confesses that he was the one who raped Alex. During his breakdown, he knocks Kevin out and escapes, letting the mist into the house to consume Kevin. He returns to the others and claims his father killed Kevin, and convinces them to go to the mall. The others protest as Kevin was the only person who wanted to go to the mall, when Adrian said he promised he would care for Kevin’s family. At the mall, Eve asks Kimi to find a room with no windows. Shelley witnesses Alex and Jay kissing. When they return to the group, Eve locks Jay in a storage locker underneath the loading dock. Shelley continues to show signs of breaking down. She later admits to Gus that she set the fire to kill Alex, unable to live with Alex surviving while her daughter died. Gus threatens to tell the group what she did, and she tells him she knows that he was hoarding food in his office. When she attempts to tell the others, he kills her. The others arrive, and after being accused of murder, Gus claims he found Shelley dead and saw Alex running away. At the church, Nathalie tells the others about the "Black Spring". Later, Connor reveals he believes Jay raped Alex. Nathalie asks the group to go to the mall with her and Connor. After most of them refuse, she and those willing to follow leave, burning down the church behind them and killing those who stayed. | ||||||||
9 | "The Waking Dream" | Nick Murphy | Amanda Segel | August 17, 2017 | 0.399 [13] | |||
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10 | "The Tenth Meal" | Guy Ferland | Christian Torpe | August 24, 2017 | 0.405 [14] | |||
Kevin finds Adrian in a liquor store and brutally beats him for raping Alex and leaving him for dead at Adrian's parents home. He learns from Adrian that the mall survivors plan to exile Alex into the mist because they believe she had killed Shelley, and leaves with Mia to save her. Connor arrives at the mall with Nathalie after being convinced by Nathalie that Jay's death will end the Black Spring. After offering Jay to the mist, Connor makes his way to the mall's entrance where Eve tells him that Alex is his daughter. Kyle kills Kimi when she protests their expulsion. Kevin intervenes and is quickly overpowered by the survivors and is forced out of the mall along with Alex, Eve and Mia. Outside, Alex is attacked in the mist but rescued by Jay. She and Jay run towards the car but Jay is engulfed in the mist and Alex is forced to watch helplessly from the car as the mist kills him. Before they leave, Kevin crashes the car through the mall's entrance – allowing the mist inside to kill the survivors, including Nathalie, while Gus barricades himself in his office. They are joined by Connor, who helps free the car from the wrecked entrance. The group spots a train and follows it to the nearest station, but is shocked when it discovers armed men offering civilians up to the mist. Wes releases Jonah and brings him to Project Arrowhead, which he says has answers about who he is, with Adrian having stowed away in their vehicle. |
Following the release of Frank Darabont's film adaptation of The Mist in 2007, executive producers Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein announced plans to develop a miniseries based on the film. In November 2013, Bob Weinstein announced that a 10-part miniseries would begin production under their Dimension Television banner. [15] It was unclear if film director Darabont would be involved in the series and the development remained stagnant for a period of time.
In September 2015, nearly two years after the project was announced, Dimension Television announced they had signed screenwriter Christian Torpe to pen the entire series. [16] In February 2016, Spike picked up the pilot. [17] In April 2016, it was announced a deal had been reached with Spike to air the entire series. [18] In July 2016, the production company announced the series had been cast and gone into production in Halifax, Nova Scotia. [2]
The ten episodes of the first season were reportedly produced on a budget of approximately CA$23 million. The government of Nova Scotia announced in July 2016 that it would contribute CA$5.9 million for the series. The production marks the biggest entertainment production ever to shoot in the province. [19]
In July 2016, Dimension Television announced Morgan Spector would play the lead character of Kevin Copeland. Other cast members announced included Frances Conroy, Alyssa Sutherland, Zenna Davis-Jones, Gus Birney, Dan Butler, Luke Cosgrove, Danica Curcic, Okezie Morro, Darren Pettie, Russell Posner and Isiah Whitlock, Jr. [2]
After the pilot episode received strong ratings, viewer numbers rapidly declined. [20] The series averaged a rating of 0.14 in adults aged 18–49, and 462,000 viewers per episode in Nielsen's Live+Same Day ratings. [21] The series was canceled in September 2017. [22]
The series received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its atmosphere and special effects, but criticized its story, performances, underdeveloped characters and unfaithfulness to the source material. On Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 60% based on 47 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Mist's absorbing atmosphere and solid special effects struggle to overcome a generally uninspired story and performances." [23] On Metacritic, the series has a weighted average score of 54 out of 100 based on 25 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [24]
Chris Scott of The New York Observer described it as "relentlessly bleak, mean, and downright sadistic at nearly every turn", linking this with the falling ratings over the series' course. [25] Indiewire reviewer Ben Travers described the plot as predictable and characters as "pretty awful", leaving viewers "rooting for the mist instead of those running from it". [26]
Ed Power of The Daily Telegraph felt that it was a middling effort for King's works, and that it benefited from sticking to familiar horror themes and tropes. [27]