The Mist (2007)

The 2007 horror film "The Mist" may hold a few too many Stephen King cliches, such as fathers pushed to sanity's edge and the depiction of Christians as deranged zealots, but it's entertaining as hell and dives deep into emotions normally ignored in this genre.

An homage to John Carpenter classics like "The Fog" and "The Thing," this horror/sci-fi flick focuses on a few dozen local townspeople in Castle Rock, Maine, trapped in a grocery as a mysterious mist rolls into town following a massive storm. There are, of course, things that go "bang" in the mist. The whole film is a small-scale take on what might be the larger world's reaction to the apparent apocalypse -- suicide, blame, hatred, panic and all-out debauchery. But all on a scale of, oh, 10,000.

Thomas Jane is the father trapped in the store with his young son and many loose cannons (Marcia Gay Harden as the nut-zoid Christian) and some unlikely heroes (Toby Jones). Director and screenwriter Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption") ratchets up great tension and, with King, deliver a devastating finale that truly haunts. Seriously, the ending is the most FUBAR thing in film since ... I can't recall.

As for any controversy of how Harden depicts a fanatical Mrs. Jim Jones, well, heck, I know a dozen alleged followers of Christ who'd line up in real life to imitate her any day of the week, much less at world's end. B