My immediate reaction to the first trailer for Spike TV's upcoming The Mist series was, "Doesn't look like they want to show off any of the monsters." Which, fine, that would be their prerogative. But when I really started looking at the press materials for the show, and subsequent featurettes, it started to become clear that maybe there aren't any monsters in it. The series has been described as a "weird cousin" to the original story, and what would be a bigger deviation from the book than to not feature a single creature, creepy-crawly, or abomination?
I recently spoke to the The Mist's showrunner Christian Torpe, a very nice man who was quite adept at dodging my questions as best he could. One burning query I had was this: Will we actually be seeing monsters this season? Torpe was pleasantly vague:
I don't want to reveal too much about what we see in there. What I can say is, it is more a show about how people react to what they see than what is actually there. It becomes boring if you know everything that's in the show, so we were mindful of not going full-blown monster show like the movie did. I still hope we will deliver to the hardcore genre fans."
Take that how you will: perhaps there are monsters in the mist and we won't be seeing them, or there are no monsters at all and the mist is just going to screw with people's heads. Which would be the smarter play for this series? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram.
Keep an eye out (like the fellow in the video below) for our full interview with Torpe soon. The Mist premieres on June 22nd.