Evil emerges from ‘The Mist’

Good and creepy, “The Mist” comes from a Stephen King novella and is more the shape, size and quality of the recent “1408,” likewise taken from a King story, than anything in the persistently fashionable charnel house inhabited by the “Saw” and “Hostel” franchises.

People get torn apart and beset by monsters in “The Mist” but not enough, I’m guessing, for the “Saw” folk, who prefer grinding realism to the supernatural. On the other hand, “1408” exceeded box office expectations. It would be heartening if this one does too, though the bleakest ending this side of “The Vanishing” may well curtail the masses.

Director Frank Darabont adapts King’s story, which means one thing straight off: The film takes its time. Darabont directed “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” King tales as well, and with “The Green Mile” he stretched the adaptation beyond the three-hour mark. For all I know, it hasn’t ended yet. (“The Mist” is a full hour shorter, for the record.)

In a small town in Maine, secret doings are being done up at the military base under the guise of “The Arrowhead Project.” A fierce thunderstorm heralds a freakish mist enveloping much of the area. A graphic artist (Thomas Jane) and his son are stuck in the local grocery store along with a variety of locals and mistrusted out-of-towners, including the artist’s imperious neighbor (Andre Braugher) and the resident fundamentalist end-times prophet, played by Marcia Gay Harden. Toby Jones, the British actor who played Truman Capote in “Infamous,” plays store manager Ollie.

The evil arrives in a judiciously varied array of critters. Huge winged insects (excellent scene, played for quiet chills rather than screams), enormo-spiders and worse keep the shoppers under siege and on their toes.

The story’s focused on how people react under unexplainable duress. King’s answer: not well.

“The Mist” has a political streak but not enough to politicize every moment. “The government’s got better things to spend our money on,” says Frances Sternhagen, as a schoolteacher complaining about the federal education budget. That’s right. On things such as horrible far-out experiments that go murderously wrong. Though he allows each major character a chance to talk, and develop, Darabont wisely doesn’t waste time with the sort of thing that “The X-Files” spent entire seasons explaining.

Something in Jane’s super-cool tough-guy act makes me root for his adversaries every time, but the rest of Darabont’s ensemble makes you believe in the premise. Most of the film takes place in or near the supermarket, so it’s sort of a miracle “The Mist” works as well as it does. It makes a tense virtue out of its confining setting.

As for that ending (very different from King’s), well, it’s certainly brave. It’s probably braver than it is dramatically effective. But the film is absorbing, and by the time the ending arrives, you may be willing to cut it a break, as I was, even if Darabont’s nervy resolution cuts the audience no break whatever.

“The Mist.” MPAA rating: R for violence, terror and gore, and language.Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes. In wide release.