The day after a strange and mysterious storm, the citizens of a small town find themselves besieged by hordes of deadly creatures. A disparate group of townsfolk barricade themselves in the local supermarket and struggle for their survival as the creatures outside grow larger and more dangerous, fighting to get inside with ever-increasing ferocity.

Not to be confused with John Carpenter's "The Fog" (1990), this one's an adaptation from a Stephen King novella of the same name - and a good one at that!

If you've been watching King adaptations your whole life, you might share my view that once aliens start appearing (think "The Tommyknockers" in 1993 and "Dreamcatcher" in 2003), the movie just goes pear-shaped. King's perversions of horror have usually found better adaptations in ghost-related films like "Salem's Lot" (1975) "Pet Sematary" (1983) or even films with abstract entities like "It" (1990) and "The Langoliers" (1995). What a surprise to find "The Mist" an exception to the rule!

Unless you're one of those high horse film snobs with default reviews of how "the book was better", you may just find "The Mist" to be a highly effective piece of horror. King's talent for instilling fear manifests well in this small town story - not because the aliens or monsters are so frightening - but because the desperation from facing an unknown danger is so realistic. Director Frank Darabont, who wrote the screenplay for "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) and "The Green Mile" (1995), captures King's chilling notions of human ugliness with good precision in this story about how a group of people stuck inside a supermarket learn to survive a mysterious mist that kills!

Never mind that the film was released last year - "The Mist" works as a well-contained B-grade horror in the same vein as movies like "Frailty" (2001) and "30 Days Of Night", although the CG does need some work. Here, a semi-famous cast is assembled perfectly, and even necessarily, to convey the possibility that disaster could happen to anybody. However, unlike movies like "Cloverfield" which rely heavily on how convincing the monsters are, "The Mist" plays on the insecurities of the characters and how each person deals with things differently in crisis.

Characters like Marcia Gay Harden's bible lunatic would outdo Thomas Jane's hero lead - but of course, all on purpose. Driven by a steady undercurrent of racism, small-town sentiments and religious fanaticism, "The Mist" can be regarded as a supernatural "12 Angry Men"-meets-"Cloverfield" with a dollop of "The Thing".

Audiences who are up for senseless screams can go watch another Thai horror. If you are looking for a movie that makes you fear the guy next to you instead of the creatures that are coming to get the two of you, then "The Mist" comes highly recommended.