Don’t Expect ‘The Mist’ To Be A Monster Free-For-All

Premiering on Spike on June 22 is the first episode of The Mist, the TV series based on Stephen King‘s novella of the same name. Despite what your expectations might be of the series, having either read the story or seen the Thomas Jane-starring film, try to temper your excitement for potentially seeing hordes of monsters causing all sorts of mayhem.

When speaking with Arrow in the Head, showrunner Christian Torpe explained of what is contained in the mist, “I don’t want to reveal too much about what we see in there.”

The showrunner continued, “What I can say is, it is more a show about how people react to what they see than what is actually there. It becomes boring if you know everything that’s in the show, so we were mindful of not going full-blown monster show like the movie did. I still hope we will deliver to the hardcore genre fans.”

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The show’s synopsis is as follows:

“A small town family is torn apart by a brutal crime. As they deal with the fallout, an eerie mist rolls in, suddenly cutting them off from the rest of the world and, in some cases, each other. Family, friends and adversaries become strange bedfellows, battling the mysterious mist and its threats, fighting to maintain morality and sanity as the rules of society break down.”

The works of Stephen King are clearly near and dear to Torpe’s heart, having previously revealed, “I grew up in a very small town in Denmark. What I would do, every Monday, I would go to the local library, where I actually worked so I would get first access to all the new books coming in, and it would always be the Stephen King books. I think the first one I read was Carrie when I was 11. I grew up with them.”

He added, “I think Stephen King understands human nature. To take his knowledge of fear and humanity and put it into a character and have that character evolve or devolve as he sees fit, that’s really the mastery of his books.”

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The show aims to explore multiple groups of residents of the town upon which the mist descends, whereas the movie and novella focused on one specific setting, allowing the show to explore all-new themes to shock and entertain its audience.