H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos has long been one of King's guiding influences, and Frank Darabont's adaptation of The Mist honors that relationship while also working as a 21st-century political parable.

[This] grocery-store survival drama, dominated by Marcia Gay Harden as a shrill fundamentalist, serves as a crude but effective allegory for post-9/11 America.

It's a horror movie of real conviction. It deserves to be a hit.

There is the obvious threat of what lies in the mist, but the story delves into several different sources of dread, such as fear itself, superstition, mistrust, and helplessness.