Stephen King fans have been eating well lately. Just last year, they got The Running Man, The Monkey, and It: Welcome to Derry, and all three turned out to be genuinely great adaptations. That momentum doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon, because one of his most overlooked adaptations is about to become a whole lot more accessible.
The film in question has a little something for every kind of horror fan. It’s got creepy monsters that feel straight out of The Thing, as well as brilliantly-written, slow-burning human drama where fear and paranoia slowly push ordinary people to turn on each other while the world collapses. It was directed by Frank Darabont, the same filmmaker behind masterpieces like The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, and it still holds a strong 74% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. But more crucially, it pulls off something that not all King adaptations have managed: a genuinely great ending. Not just a decent one. It’s widely hailed as one of the bleakest, most nihilistic endings in cinema history.
That film is 2007’s The Mist, and it is coming to the free streaming platform Kanopy on May 15. And free here doesn’t mean you’re going to have to sit through a million ads to get through the movie. Kanopy is an ad-free service; the only catch is that you will need a public library card or a university login to access it.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
Mike Flanagan Is Set To Direct a Brand New Take on ‘The Mist’
Darabont’s adaptation has long been considered the definitive version of King’s novella, so much so that King himself has stated he preferred Darabont’s ending to his own. But that title of “definitive” may soon be challenged. Mike Flanagan is set to write and direct a brand new big-screen adaptation of The Mist. He has already delivered some of the best King adaptations in existence with Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and Life of Chuck, and his new Carrie miniseries is set to premiere this October as well.
Flanagan has confirmed his version will not be a retread of Darabont’s film and that he is going in a very different direction with the 1980 novella source material, going so far as to say the differences start from page one. However, Flanagan is currently juggling a full slate. Along with Carrie, his Clayface movie is slated to release this fall as well. On top of that, he is also developing a new Exorcist film starring Scarlett Johansson, which is currently set for a 2027 release. With so much already on his plate, it will likely be a while before his take on The Mist actually materializes. But that just means fans have plenty of time to go back and revisit the 2007 classic before the new adaptation arrives.
The Mist is currently available to stream on The Roku Channel. It will be available to stream on Kanopy starting May 15.
