Spike’s ‘The Mist’ Series Is Equal Parts Horror and Drama
As the popular saying goes, hell is other people, and that’s precisely the approach writer and executive producer Christian Torpe took for his adaptation of Stephen King’s 1980 novella The Mist—supernaturally creepy fog notwithstanding.
Like King’s original story, the series centers on a mysterious cloud engulfing a small town. “We had a rule that if we ever needed the Mist to move the story forward, we had a problem,” Torpe says. “I think with all good horror, you have to be able to take the gimmick out of it and still have a fun story. So if you took out the Mist, you would still have a drama.”
Unlike the 2007 film version, which centered mostly on locals stranded in a supermarket, the show expands upon the idea, with several groups taking refuge in different locations in the town. “You get little pressure cookers,” Torpe explains, “little islands of people, each of them trying to get a sense of what is going on, and later on in the story, you get confrontation between these groups and what they have come to believe.”
The Mist, Season Premiere, Thursday, June 22, 10/9c, Spike
