There's a reason why the Stephen King novella was, in fact, a novella. There is only so much story you can wring out of the premise. King knew that, and so did Frank Darabont when he did the movie adaptation.

The TV version of The Mist, however, clearly believes this is a story that can be milked for as long as possible. After a couple of decent opening episodes, the story has slowed down to a crawl. The Mist of the title is purely there as a plot device to drive the human interest story. Now, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I doubt that is why most people are watching the show. In this show, though, the Mist is already playing increasing second-fiddle to the human drama in the same way that the zombies of The Walking Dead are now almost irrelevant to that show.

Six episodes in are we are already dealing with some of the most turgid and hackneyed story lines involving rape, crazy old ladies, mad doctors, and so on. The list is endless. Now, you can defend this and say the Mist is making the people act like this, but that doesn't change the fact that it is increasingly ludicrous to watch. It is putting me in mind of Shyamalan's The Happening, and that is definitely not a comparison that does it any favours.

The episodic nature of the show, of course, means that the story will never be as dynamic or as engaging as the movie, but even so... it is increasingly dull and predictable.

The choice to change the nature of the Mist, from something from another dimension, hiding monsters to a supernatural version, also seems a little weird. I get that they wanted to do something a little different with it, but honestly, the new Mist is kinda boring.

In fact, watching the Mist brings out the same feelings that I used to get when I was the designated driver on a lad's night out. Everyone else was having a whale of a time whilst I looked on, sober as a judge, and tried not to be embarrassed by what I was seeing. The Mist gives me that embarrassed feeling when I watch it. The sensation that I'd enjoy the whole thing a lot more if I was drunk.

It isn't badly made. It is decently acted. But it just doesn't make me want to tune in every week to watch it. It isn't gripping drama. It isn't scary and, after six episodes, I now have no real interest in finding out what the Mist really is, nor do I care about any of the characters in the show.

It's just... meh!

SUMMARY: Human drama (and melodrama) dressed up as horror. Not engaging and not very convincing. Read the story, or watch the movie. Both are better.

I'm a huge Stephen King fan, and I really enjoyed the movie "The Mist," so I assume I'm part of the target market for this show... and so far, it's been pretty disappointing.

Spoilers may lie ahead!

Here's what I was looking for in a TV-series adaptation: Danger, suspense, backstory on where The Mist comes from, how it came to be released, lots and lots of big creatures (spiders! flies! crab-like things, tentacles!), people learning how to fight with the creatures, maybe a few gung-ho idiots that die quickly and a few gung-ho idiots that succeed in some missions through the mist, smart people who make survivalist plans, crazy people who think it's the end times, a bit of mob-mentality from people scared out of their minds, and hopefully some new twists to keep the show going -- like... maybe missions to Arrowhead to plug the leak, maybe some Pacific Rim style fighting the alien invasion, maybe the US military retaliating against the mist, maybe even some MIB agents or some mythical tale about how the mist had come before and what we need to do to stop it.

Here's what we've got so far up through episode 4: Teenagers dealing with gender issues, rape, underage drinking, marital issues, people casually playing games and chatting while waiting out the mist in a mall (even though they've seen the mist murder people just outside the doors), a few people dying from random things we either can't see or do see for a blip and then are gone with no explanation or exploration, and apparently THIS version of the mist has some sort of magic and consciousness as it "knows people," can conjure up dead people to taunt you, and gets thicker and thinner at times... oh, and the creatures are like... moths, roaches, and smoke-monsters.

I kid you not, 4 episodes in and people are tossing a football in the mall as if people hadn't died outside and squabbling over petty issues. A mother just saw her daughter die, yet she's calm enough to go sit on a pillow and chat about other things. She barely tried to open a door to go after her kid before a monster got her. For some reason, the mist itself IS the monster in a sense b/c people are scared to open a door to let it in... instead of it being just a fog to hide and/or sustain the monsters within it. The show is like "Under the Dome" meets "The Walking Dead" only with less suspense and less horror.

On the plus side, we do have a pastor who thinks it's the end times, a hippie who worships nature that thinks the creatures are manifestations of God, some soldiers who may know more about the Arrowhead project, and we have a girl who for some reason survived a smoke-monster attack. There are still plenty of people to use as fodder, and there's at least one working vehicle to use to explore. All the right notes are there to build something great on, so it's possible they could turn this around.

Maybe it takes 4 episodes to build some exposition... but, I doubt it. It's as if the writer/director thinks the show should be about feelings, deep societal issues, and growing pains instead of -- MONSTERS & people reacting to the END OF THE WORLD as they know it.

I was really hoping for more of a 12 Monkeys style adaptation. Take a movie concept, add in a lot of back-story, create several long story arcs that go beyond the original movie's premise into exciting new territory with new, fun, dangerous things to figure out & new bad-guys, plot twists, and adventures to explore.

Nah, this went all lifetime movie with some deadly fog. So sad.

After watching the first 5 episodes, I just can't take any more. This show is absolutely horrible. From the completely ridiculous decisions made by the characters throughout to the uninteresting and poorly written drama, this show needs to be put out of it's misery (no pun intended). I hate the characters. I don't care to know anyone's backstory. The acting is uninspired. The story is a re-hash of a re-hash and, even then, the main story takes a back seat to the contrived nonsense meant to inform us about the characters. Even though the writers are brutal and relentless in their quest to force us to watch their family/teen drama instead of the horror show we tuned in for, their efforts only made me hate everyone. This show is truly insufferable.

I rarely ever write reviews but for this I am making an exception.

This series didn't just disappoint me but it got me very angry. Christian Torpe should make a public apology for what he did to this show.

When I first heard they were making this into a TV series I was really excited, I loved the movie and I am a big fan of Stephen King's adaptations. I originally thought that they would be expanding on the novella and movie. There is so much they could have done with this story.

I was so excited to see more about the arrowhead project. They could have easily made a great show that revolved around just the scientists at the arrowhead project. Basically a prequel to the movie.

But what this guy did to the story.. Wow.. First off the mist (in my opinion) is a kind of atmosphere from another dimension, that has creatures in it. It's basically their environment, they are just following the mist. For whatever reason Torpe decided to remove the creatures for... I don't even know, hallucinations? Ghosts? Guys on Horses with arrow? COME ON!

Why would someone do that? The coolest parts of the book and the movie involve the creatures and the mystery of where the mist came from. How do you remove that element?

They barely mention the arrowhead project. They are actually leaning more toward the mist being some kind of natural disaster, how stupid!

Then there are the horrible characters in the series, I think its safe to say I hate all of them. The story line involving who raped the daughter is so pointless (and the person who raped her is obvious). The junky who decides to go through detox in the middle of this happening. The people in the church have no point what so ever. The people trapped in the mall is a complete rip-off of dawn of the dead. The black smoke monster from lost, the one that kills the little girl, was by far the worst special effects I have seen in a long time.

Honestly what where they thinking?

I've watched all 4 episodes and here's my take:

1. Every person is a known stereotype

2. Every person is really REALLY stupid

3. No monsters (just bugs)

4. They could have packed all 4 episodes into a single 30 minute segment and still had time to include 2 monster attacks and a food fight

5. Stoners will find ways to get into trouble ...and lastly...

It's good to see the Smoke Monster from 'Lost' finally get another gig

The pilot is an emotional roller-coaster. At first you are amused with how bad the writing is, but then you get angry at how bad the writing is. And then it's funny again because you realize it must be a parody. In case the title was not self-evident, this show is about a mist. The mist is coming and it will kill you with the most absurd amalgam of bad acting, bad writing and a tasteless soup of sociopolitical stereotypes. However, I was slightly entertained at how stupid it all was. So I give it a 3.

In The Mist we get to know a small American town in which everyone seems to want to come across as incompetent, over-reactive, small-minded, humorless but above all very unfriendly. Everyone seems to hate each other, and the few people who form the exception, the people who do not constantly act like an idiot, and thus with whom I could best identify, are also the first to die (already in episode 1). This phenomenon is increasingly seen in drama series. At the The Walking Dead I decided to discontinue watching after three seasons (I was ultimately in favor of the zombies, which is not the maker's intention I assume). What makes The Mist even easier to dismiss are the worthless special effects and terrible acting. If you make a television show that is located in a thick layer of mist, you want to make sure that the fog looks like a fog. I suspect the makers were trapped inside their own cloud of incompetence.

I am very disappointed with this as I was looking forward to it being a big fan of the movie, but not having read the novel. I have only watched the first three episodes so my review is limited to those shows. Very much like the movie the mist moves in and various characters get trapped in a variety of places with other characters supposedly creating tension. But there is none. Characters do stupid infuriating things. But unlike the movie there is almost nothing happening outside in the mist and what does happen is not very interesting. It's about 90% characters sitting around talking about their feelings. I know this will allow them to drag it out from a movie to a ten episode TV show and keep the budget low but it's quite tedious as the characters are not that strong. Maybe it will pick up but so far it's very boring.

I was really looking forward to this; The Mist was filmed a few blocks down from where I live (Bedford Mall), and I was hoping to see my favourite characters from the King story back again.

This was incredibly lame, though. I know it's not necessarily fair to judge a series by its first installment, but what the hell was this? Its obvious attempt to be inclusive and politically correct just comes off as a sad and lazy marketing gimmick, almost none of the original Mist characters remain, we've got everything thrown into the mix from priests to prejudiced football players, the plot is just scattered everywhere in all directions, and though The Mist worked exceptionally well as a 2007 movie contained to fill a mere two hours with a poignant story and atmosphere, this TV miniseries is boring, so far hasn't really gone anywhere, and its pacing is really quite bizarre. I'm not even going to get into how bad I think the special effects are, either. It's more like a video game than a TV production.

As the risk of sounding pretentious, I'm going to say that I think the movie and book worked very well because in a short amount of time they were able to portray what a normal mix of human beings resort to when all the safety and comforts of life are taken away. The characters in the movie also felt more real and made you actually give a damn about them, whereas in this, it's just a bunch of walking talking stereotypes each pushing their own agenda. In the movie, I was seriously disturbed by Mrs. Carmody, worried for Bud Brown when he got lost in the parking lot of the supermarket while trying to escape, and the painfully tragic ending hit me like an anvil. The characters in this miniseries are tolerable at best, and at their worst they're a bunch of whiny, coddled special snowflakes. I find it difficult to believe that a town so small could house such a wide variety of people with some sort of teenage angst garbage to push out there. Oh, and let's not forget the rape scene, because trivializing rape for shock value is really classy, sure.

On the plus side, I'm glad to see another production being filmed here in good ol' Nova Scotia, and to finally see that near-empty mall getting used for something.

loved the movie and was really looking forward to this show after watching the first episode I don't need or want to watch any more. right from the start the show comes off as more of a social justice warrior drama then anything else. The first episode revolves more around the drama of a teen girl then the mist in fact the mist is only in about the opening 2 minutes and the closing 10 minutes. the episode revolving around a girl going to a party getting drunk and getting rapped by the local football star quickly gets annoying. throw that in with the fact that every straight male character seems to be either homophobic, racist, an asshole, or a total push over and you really just want to turn off your TV. in the end I will never watch this show again and highly recommend that nobody even bothers with it seriously don't waste an hour of your life on this show.

So we are three episodes in and we have dramas left right and centre among various people in a town that is trapped under a dome that they cannot escape... sorry! I meant trapped by a mist that they cannot escape. This is utter rubbish. The writing is awful, most of the acting horrendous. It is like a flashback to 80's horror but the really bad stuff, not the good. How does this stuff get the go ahead in this day and age? The scene where Eve was in the room with the army guy where she doesn't even give him a chance to explain or get his ID out was so silly and unbelievable but sadly probably not the worst example. The only reason to keep watching is to see if it can possibly get any worse. Seriously dreadful.

4/10, only because I think the Mist might win

Really the worst money grab I ever seen. There is nothing interesting going on in this horrific (pun intended) adaptation of a Stehen King novella. I can only imagine it is King's difficulty making condo payments that has led to this debacle.

The series is comically bad. Everyone in it is a stereotypical bigoted version of an everyday American. You are left desperately looking for at least one redeeming character. Even the 'rape' victim is a whiny self-absorbed brat that keeps finding herself alone with her love interest, yep you guessed it, the supposed rapist.

But we can forgive her for following him around can't we, he does prove to her he didn't do it, by touching her hand, then showing he can walk away. Good grief. I'm thinking we are gonna find out later he is secretly gay. It is the only way to redeem a All Star Jock-type these days.

The 'Reverend', every King story has one, is strangely defensive when it comes to 'his God', so much so he is threatened by a crazy lady that believes a spider she found in the church is God.

A coward bully cop who's son is???, you guessed it, the accused rapist, and guess who he is stuck in the same church with???, you guess it again, (if you didn't your just not paying attention) the dad of alleged victim. Awkward!!!. Let's talk about dad.

I think he will be the hero in the end, why, because he wrote a children's book. And if there is one thing I know about King stories is the writers that find themselves in it, are always smart intellectual-republican-hating types, that are always heroes, and they are also always white men. Just saying...

Back to "The Mist" (say it spooky) and you find that scarier than this pond-scum of a series.

Alyssa Sutherland, no relation, she's just a huge fan of 24, seriously, look it up. Is playing her most unlikable character to date, and I am including Vikings, where her murder was cheered the world over. She is a cheating-whore (their words, not mine, the rest are though) a murderer, a bully, and self-absorbed. She is also the mother of the supposed rape victim.

Sutherlands character is a know-it-all that does not like following other people's rules and this leads to the death of a child. Mommies need their wine breaks. But that's okay, they will blame that on another 'teenager' that they will send to his death, because now of course, we must follow the rules.

Which rule, 'Bust a deal, face the wheel', sorry wrong movie, I digress, 'make us unsafe and out side you must go' even if opening the door is the action we are accusing you of doing that led to the death we are blaming YOU for. I know, it's tough to follow the logic.

Even the gay kid is becoming irredeemable as we are now finding out, he is a liar about the whole, "I saw him rape her" scenario. I'm gong to predict, the football-jock-star-quarterback rapist he accused, is a secrete lover of his. If I am wrong, please forgive me I'm only three shows in. But I do know my King.

I short, I am rooting for the Mist here. So I will say a prayer to the Mother-Earth Spider-God, Please give the Mist the strength to KILL THEM ALL!!! In the name of your only begotten son, Stephen King.

I really love the movie and the short story. What a back story there is to explore, not to mention the horror of what we know is in the mist.

When I heard that a TV show was being made I got excited, they could not go wrong, the work had be done by the movie to set it up to be scary, exciting adventure and I really want to know more about Arrowhead.

What i just watched had absolutely nothing in common with the book or movie, it was a terrible...and I do mean terrible, production with poor acting, poor script, unlovable and uninteresting characters and they spent most of the first episode ticking boxes. Weird, make up wearing teenage boy who is gay / not gay, football jocks, rape, sex education gone wrong, racism etc...

Those things have a place but it's not in a show about monsters in the mist.

I don't know if i can go through another episode, I probably will, it cant be any worse than the pilot.

I am annoyed about this, this failure of a show could prevent anyone else from trying to continue the Mist story in the future.

I've made it to the third episode, in the hope that it may improve, but no, the storyline just doesn't seem to have a direction or any hint of explanation, the characters are some dimensional and the quality of acting is poor.

I could forgive the first episode, and possible half of the second episode for being slow and introducing characters, but, by episode three we are seeing little in the way of story progression, I won't be watching any more of this. The film was so much better.

This new imagining of the Stephen King horror tale has so many "agendas" that I think I'll pass on the rest of the season. I realize that this first episode merely introduces the main characters, but jeez... gender fluid teens, murderous prostitutes, date rape and homophobic football players have no place in this particular story. So what gives? Is this the Social Justice Warrior version of what should be a flat-out horror show? Maybe it will improve in subsequent installments, but this initial outing leaves me doubtful.

Politics aside, if you look at the show being apolitical, first 30 minutes of the pilot is enough to conclude that this is trash. Being a big fan of the movie, I was looking forward to the series. But huge disappointment. Bad acting, cliché sub-plots and characters, bad production, effects and set-up (fight in the barn, behaviors of people in the mall and in the other places), dumb dialogues ("rebellious" girl speech to gay teen in jail)....I am sure I missed some other reason and examples....but these are some of the things that made me decide that I am done with this after a pilot. If they did not record the whole season in advance, my prediction would be that after 5 episodes they would cancel the show.

'The Mist' has all the same problems that 'Under The Dome' had; It doesn't represent a community of people fairly. The TV series has unreasonable people from the start. The movie had a store full of people that were neither good nor bad ... well, one was pretty crazy ... but when they become frightened they become irrational.

That's the whole point of the story: How everyday human beings can go stupid when they're horrified or outraged.

I did read through a few reviews pointing out political messaging, which is fair enough. I don't really care about the message, most shows have a message. My problem is where the film showcased how regular people can become monsters; The TV series parrots the media representation of bad cops, toxic masculinity, homophobia, women's issues, gun control and drug addiction. There's no genuine medium or gray areas to explore. It's all-or-nothing without discussion.

Lastly - There's no monsters. That's unbelievably ridiculous. We went from gigantic beasts eating people to some dumb bugs crawling in their ears. Seriously? It's not enough that I'm bored with the main characters, I don't even get to see tentacles?

I find this to be a very poor adaption of King. One of King's best talents is making believable characters who the reader (or watcher) can somehow identify with easily. The characters in this adaption are not realistic nor can I identify with any of them or really care about any of them. The horror elements of the King novella are missing, the monsters in the mist are gone so this has become more of a soap opera with characters who and poorly drawn. Worst of all this series just drags not excitement, no caring about what the mist is, and it should not have been a 10 segment series. Hopefully it will only last one season and fade away from our memory.

This show is beyond awful , It's full of cringy stereo types . Every 10 minutes you'll hear another liberal agenda like gender fluid teens or gays etc . They couldn't even stay away from their so called rape culture ! there's mentions of rape everywhere , Characters are far from likable or realistic .

Everyone get triggered so damn fast . It's your typical cop hating , Christian bashing ultra liberal thing

There are no monsters either , Just small bugs and awful CGI

Avoid this piece of trash on all costs

Note to the writers : You're nothing but talent less , unoriginal fidget spinning SJW morons

Never EVER make a show again , let alone ruining something as great as the Mist

I feel bad for the actors that were a part of this.

Where to start?

It's incredibly generic. Extremely hard to suspend disbelief with all of the corny lines, predictable cut and paste plot points, and silly horror scenes. The characters are stereotypical and have little to no depth beyond the stereotypes that they align with. It's embarrassing how hard it tries to cash in on shock value. It blatantly uses a traumatic experience as a substitution for character development in the daughter. It tries its very best to be edgy, and succeeds, resulting in a cringe-worthy final product. The horror doesn't feel like horror. This show doesn't hold a candle to the movie critically.

The only things not so bad were maybe the scenery and some of the actor's performances. Even with the uninspired generic script, some of the actors managed to give somewhat believable portrayals, actually sometimes sounding like real human beings. And kudos to them because the screen writing did them absolutely no favours there. Like, unless you're talking about a sitcom, your TV show characters shouldn't feel like TV show characters. They should feel like real people; you should be able to imagine the characters as real people, acting the same way in real life. The people creating this show seemed to have forgot about that somewhere in the creation process. There were a number of times where I thought, 'Wow, I don't think this character would realistically react that way, or say that thing.' I hate that.

This show is an absolute disappointment, especially when you compare it to its film and novella counterparts.

"The Mist" described: the mist rolls in, some people die (we don't even get to see how except for 2 occasions...nice "horror"), and then all we get is people arguing with each other and random nothings happening, it is more of a human psychology series on what happens when people becomes more and more desperate, certainly not horror.

To me it seems like "The Mist" was made on a small budget which is why we never get to see any monsters and we only get to see trimmed down half-arsed "horror" scenes when something does happen, also, it's full of stereotypes such as: The tough guy, The Evangelic maniac, The Hippie, The Strong Woman, The Righteous Guy....the list goes on and on, and the sad part is that the show focus mostly on these stereotypes which are boring shallow characters which will only lead to more future drama instead of actual interesting horror.

Worth a watch if you got nothing to do, but do not expect to be overly entertained.

This is a quick review. First I am not offended neither did I notice any "Social Justice" in the series, Stephen Kings books often portrait racism, woman abuse, and bullying, so even if the series had that in abundance it would not make it a "Social Justice Warrior" wannabe Mist, it would be a regular Stephen King adaptation. Unfortunately, the series is a weak adaptation, the acting is poor, the effects are cheap, really low budget, the editing is awful, and the directing is B-movie at best, the cinematography is atrocious, nothing is worse then a "cool" shot horribly done and poorly centered, like in the third episode, some wings burst of a guys back, and it's just bad. The story is blend, the characters are boring, and the greatest offence...three episodes in and no monsters.

if the series picks up I will be seriously impressed, because the way I see it, down is the only way it has.

Just awful. Let me start off by saying that the actress who plays eva Is awful. There is NO way i can watch any more episodes with her in it. You end up hating her after two mins of being on screen. over acting mixed with her weird facial structure, over exaggerated facial expressions and her characters overbearing mothering is smothering even the viewer. Special effects are cheap and forced. Don't waste your time

some spoilers ahead

Hi..

This is for the people who read the reviews off people who only saw the pilot or up to episode 3, so I will not cover the ground they already did. I just want to say that I was stupid enough to watch until ep.6 ( I have time to kill because I have to commute by train everyday for 3 hours). And guess what: It still sucks!! Still no monsters, no progress, stupid and unexplainable decision making by all the characters all the time ( you just want to rush in and slap them in face and yell: "wake up you idiot!), people in town loosing it really fast for no apparent reason... It's just plain silly and insulting. So... please, don't waste your time! It is really bad... it truly is.

I warned you

I am a Stephen King fan but I have read and watched enough to realise that he can be hit or miss. This one is is best forgotten. The characters are for the most part annoying and stereotyped. The liberal propaganda element is hard to ignore. Most of what I have to say has already been said so I will save you the time and just cut to the chase.

This is a poor production with little to recommend it. It has nothing that makes King so popular. I honestly can't think of any reason he allowed it to use his work and name other than a pay cheque. It is boring, predictable, clichéd and over all not worth your time. I could not watch all the episodes. I found myself just fast forwarding more and more until I just gave up. Watch the movie or read the book but give this a wide berth.