Feature Presentation: Stephen King’s latest doomsday scenario to be adapted for the screen, The Mist finds David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his five-year-old son (Nathan Gamble) trapped in a small-town supermarket while an army of hellish beasts from an alternate dimension gathers outside, ominously shrouded in an impenetrable haze. Frank Darabont, who previously directed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, keeps the atmosphere tense and the action increasingly terrifying as Drayton and his other would-be survivors wander one by one into the mist, which swallows its victims as if it were a living, breathing creature in its own right. The Mist works best as an intelligently written, old-fashioned monster movie; Darabont veers into far bleaker territory during the film’s grisly climax, to no discernible end.

Bonus Materials: Darabont’s commentary focuses on the technical, explaining his decision to shoot on an elaborately constructed sound stage in Shreveport, La., and heaping generous praise on his cast, particularly Jane and longtime collaborator William Sadler. More gratifying is his inclusion of a black-and-white version of the film, a fitting tribute to the genre classics that inspired it.