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Review: ‘The Mist’ Rolls in, Bearing Small-Town Stereotypes
If you’ve made a television horror series, you probably don’t want to see it described in a review as comfort food. Yet that’s how the first episode of “The Mist” registers.
Small Maine town; culturally diverse collection of residents thrown into turmoil by a supernatural occurrence — sure, we’re familiar with this story, because we’ve seen adaptations of Stephen King’s works before. And there’s nothing wrong with comfort food; sometimes it’s exactly what you crave. Just don’t expect to be challenged or electrified by it.
The series, which begins Thursday on Spike, is a heavily adapted and updated version of Mr. King’s novella from the early 1980s about a town enveloped by a mysterious and lethal fog. The premiere — the only episode made available for review — spends much of its time establishing the pre-mist dynamics among the town’s residents, and in this version of the story they’re right out of today’s headlines.
The Copelands, Eve (Alyssa Sutherland) and Kevin (Morgan Spector), disagree over how protective to be of their teenage daughter, Alex (Gus Birney). Dad is the more permissive one, and when he allows her to go to a party celebrating the school football team’s latest victory, something bad happens. The family is already ostracized by the town’s right-wing residents because Eve, a teacher, has been testing the school board’s restrictions on sex education, and the accusation Alex makes against a football hero only adds to the hostility.
By the way, Alex’s best friend, Adrian (Russell Posner), is gender fluid and bullied by fellow students and shunned at home. There’s more, but you get the idea: The town is a microcosm of the culture wars, and the mist, which by the episode’s end has asserted itself in brutal fashion, will no doubt both clarify battle lines and dissolve them as the series moves along.
This is of course a classic formula, in King tales and in general. It requires a lot of stereotypes about small towns and the prejudices that abound in them, and “The Mist” (which was created by Christian Torpe) doesn’t seem as if it intends to freshen those conceits. It’s hard not to think of “The Mist” as “Under the Dome 2,” though the special effects here are cheesy rather than impressive, as they were in the premiere of that CBS series in 2013.
Whether this kind of premise can sustain itself in a TV series is open to question. “Under the Dome,” which was also based on a book by Mr. King, started off strong but overstayed its welcome, petering out after three seasons. On the other hand, there’s the example of Frank Darabont, who in 2007 made a pretty good movie, also titled “The Mist,” from this same source material. He went on to create a TV show you might have heard of called “The Walking Dead” that has shown just how good a well-executed horror series can be.
The most interesting thing about “The Mist” might end up being what it signals for Spike, a channel that has been barely visible for years, riding lazy reality shows like “Lip Sync Battle,” “Bar Rescue” and “Ink Master.” (Though “Time: The Kalief Browder Story,” its documentary from earlier this year, is well worth watching.) The channel has a few other projects in the works — “The Shannara Chronicles,” based on the series of fantasy novels by Terry Brooks; a six-part series about the standoff in Waco, Tex. — that will warrant attention. “The Mist” might just be an opening act for a run at real relevance.
The Mist
Thursday on Spike
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