Book #29

The Mist by Stephen King

This is a reread and it feels like is wasn’t long ago that I read this novella and watched the movie for the first time. Looking at my old blog’s archive, I see that I finished The Mist in May of 2008, over four years ago.

When I read it the first time, I had just watched the movie. The movie (2007, directed by Frank Darabont) has one of the  most devastating endings in the history of film (though manages to be less depressing than the ending of Mystic River (2007)). The ending is different from the book, but one that Stephen King highly approves of. When I read it the first time, I was of the opinion that the movie was better, tighter. The movie ending is better in many ways, but I’ve changed my mind otherwise.

I’m not often scared while I’m reading. I read a good amount of horror, but it doesn’t really make me nervous me. A couple times while reading The Mist, I got a little jumpy. And this is a reread. I know what’s going to happen…except for one of the parts that I forgot about. I forgot about the trip to the pharmacy. I forgot that in the movie, which I also rewatched for the first time in four years, it’s an overdone scene. In the book, King plays it just right. We see what the characters see and realize *what* they’re seeing just a moment before they do. It’s a hard thing to pull off when writing. I don’t know whether I didn’t appreciated the difficulty before, or if the difference was that in 2008 I watched the movie first then read the book. This time, I read first.

I’m not a big Stephen King fan, but this ranks as one of my favorites of his works.

Format: Adobe Digital Edition
Procurement: Greater Phoenix Digital Library

R.I.P. VII