Here’s how The Mist is altered by its black and white version. Stephen King’s The Mist novella was first published back in 1980 and finds a group of people trapped in their local supermarket when an otherworldly mist descends over town. The survivors are picked off by hungry Lovecraftian creatures lurking within the mist, but soon tensions in the group itself become more of a threat than the monsters outside. The Mist is one of King’s most chilling works and would later inspire the likes of video game Silent Hill.
Frank Darabont had previously struck gold with King adaptations like The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile and had long dreamed of turning The Mist into a movie. His dream came through in 2007, when his terrifying take on the story arrived. It was praised for its performances, including lead Tom Jane (The Punisher) and Marcia Gay Harden, but the unrelentingly bleak ending upset many viewers. Despite this, The Mist is now considered a modern horror great.
The Mist was later adapted as a TV show by Spike in 2017, but it was greeted with most negative notices and was quickly canceled. The Mist movie had a somewhat modest budget, though Frank Darabont was offered a budget increase if he agreed to change the ending for a happier one. Darabont stuck to his guns, feeling the ending was integral to the story, but he had originally envisioned it in black and white too. Needless to say, producers nixed this notion early on.
Darabont later put together a black and white cut for The Mist’s DVD and Blu-ray Special Edition release, and in the minds of many fans, it’s the superior version. Just on a visual level, the movie is far more striking, but it also has the effect of making it feel like a creature feature from the 1950s or 60s. Those kind of b-movies greatly inspired King while writing The Mist in the first place, and Darabont wanted his movie to have that same DNA. The lack of color also adds to the menace of the movie’s CGI monsters, who famously looked a little iffy in the color version.
More than anything, The Mist just feels darker and creepier in black and white. The pervading sense of dread is elevated further with the new color scheme, particularly in the already pitch black finale. Making a black and white cut of a movie has also become a niche trend in recent years, including Mad Max: Fury Road - Black & Chrome and Logan: Noir. To be clear, The Mist is still a great movie in its color version, but for those who’ve seen the film in black and white, it’s hard to go back.
Next: The Mist Vs The Fog: Which Horror Classic Is Scarier?
