Before writing and posting this, I saw Magellan's review below mine, and he made a point that struck me while I was watching the movie yesterday (a bit late considering it was released over a year ago, true, but better late than never, to coin a cliche). As a hard-core agnostic (if that makes any sense) I have no love at all for religious fanatics and zealots; I believe 90% of the world's savagery, bloodshed and intolerance throughout recorded history has been because of religion. Still, the problem I've always had with King as a writer/storyteller is that he always takes the "easy way out" when it comes to characterization, and he does so here. As Magellen mentions, Marcia Gay Harden starts off as a whacky fundamentalist Christian and only gets progressively more whacky as the story unfolds, and it becomes so easy to hate her; she's only steps away from becoming a cartoon villain of the Snidely Whiplash variety (albeit a religious Snidely Whiplash). God knows, America has had more than its share of religious freaks, from James Dobson and Jimmy Swaggart to Jim Jones and David Koresh, but wouldn't it have made more of a dramatic impression if the Harden character had started off as a basically decent woman of moderate religiosity who becomes increasingly unhinged by the events occurring both inside and outside the grocery store? Then her interaction with other increasingly fanatical or fear-maddened characters would have been truly gripping, maybe even fascinating and illuminating-- in King's hands, though, Harden's religious dementia becomes only a convenient plot device, rather than something of substance or potency. Had King been a better, less facile writer, the subsequent interaction between the characters could have made for truly classic horror, instead of better-than-average horror. Which, again, is sort of the problem I have with everything King has put his hand to. His characters have surprisingly little depth or complexity. The protagonist here, as the protagonist invariably is in every one of King's works, is a successful Yuppie who is basically decent (loves his wife, watches cartoons with his kid, listens to George Thorogood on the radio) but is capable of becoming a resourceful "hard guy" when the occasion calls for it. There's the beautiful blonde who becomes attached to him during their time of adversity and the precocious little kid...what would a King movie or story be without a precocious little tyke?...and the nerdy store clerk who surprisingly proves to be an expert gunman (Toby Jones, who would go on to play Truman Capote in another movie), and the ol' lady with more "Yankee" starch in her than any of the younger guys around her, and the sniveling military guy, and...etc. etc. etc. Don't misunderstand me; "The Mist" is one of the better cinematic adaptations of a King story. It's not boring, the creatures the humans encounter are genuinely horrifying, and the storyline is surprisingly grim and engaging for a King work. Sadly, while King has gotten better as a writer over the decades, he still is lacking when it comes to creating multidimensional human characters that don't reek of soap opera sap and melodramatic predictability.