FAQ

Following a violent thunderstorm in which movie poster illustrator David Drayton's (Thomas Jane) house loses power and trees smash through his studio window and his boathouse, he and his eight-year-old son Billy (Nathan Gamble), along with neighbor Brent Norton (Andre Braugher), head into town for supplies. While they are in the store with dozens of other shoppers also looking for supplies, a siren goes off and a strange white mist settles over the town. Soon, the shoppers learn that the mist contains dangerous, alien creatures and that they must band together to keep themselves safe ...until it becomes apparent that there may be a greater danger inside the store than out.

The Mist is a 1980 novella by American horror fiction writer Stephen King, featured in the King collection Skeleton Crew (1985). The story was adapted for the movie by director and producer Frank Darabont. King's novella has also been adapted for a television series, titled The Mist (2017).

Although not directly stated in the movie, it is implied that the creatures entered through an inter-dimensional rift as a result of Project Arrowhead, a secret scientific project being carried out on a nearby military base. An early draft of the script written by Frank Darabont included a prologue set in the base's laboratory, providing a reasonably good idea of what the Arrowhead Project was supposed to have been and what went wrong. In the prologue, a number of civilian scientists, computer technicians, and Army personnel gather around a large object which resembles an old-fashioned diving helmet: a metal tank with thick glass windows. One of the scientists expresses some concern about running an experiment in the middle of a thunderstorm. His superior tells him to relax and orders that the device be turned on. When the machine is activated, a small point of white light (described as looking like a flashlight shining through a keyhole) appears inside the tank. Moments later, however, lightning strikes the base's electrical generator. The point of light begins to get larger and brighter. One of the scientists calls for the machine to be turned off, but a technician tells him "we can't; we're drawing [the power] right out of the sky." The scientists stand helplessly by as the portal inside the tank gets wider and wider and a white mist begins to fill the tank. Something "slithery" is then glimpsed moving inside the tank. A colonel asks the scientists how thick the glass is in the tank's windows. The scientist, sounding none too confident, tells him that it can withstand up to forty times the pressure of our own atmosphere. Apparently that isn't strong enough, because the windows of the tank begin to crack and finally shatter outwards, releasing the mist into the laboratory.

One of the medications they obtain from the next door pharmacy is Silvadene (silver sulfadiazine). sold under the brand Silvadene among others, is a topical antibiotic used in partial thickness and full thickness burns to prevent infection. Tentative evidence has found other antibiotics to be more effective and therefore it is no longer generally recommended

Although Stephen King appears in cameos in some of his movies, he does not have a cameo in The Mist. However, the pharmacy next door to the market is named "King's Pharmacy", which may be considered a cameo of sorts.

"The Host of Seraphim" by Dead Can Dance.

Yes, it's true. This version is called the Director's Choice Version and features a three-minute long explanation by director Frank Darabont in which he explains why this black & white is version is his preferred version of the movie. Besides this color difference some minor changes can be found between both versions.

This is never fully explained, only that they are from another dimension. It's likely that when King wrote the story, the appearance of the creatures was created to make it more surreal and grotesque, not to mention that it gave the creatures more leverage in their ability to attack the supermarket and to be effectively frightening.