Writer-director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) delves once more into author Stephen King's twisted imagination for a skin-crawling thriller about a small town under siege from bloodthirsty creatures.

On paper, this sounds suspiciously like a rip-off of John Carpenter's 1980 classic The Fog. Spookily, King's novella was originally published as part of an anthology that same year, then reprinted in an edited form as part of the celebrated 1985 short story collection Skeleton Crew.

While Carpenter's film conjured a nightmarish vision of vengeful ghosts, The Mist imagines hordes of mutated creepy crawlies with an insatiable hunger for human flesh, unleashed upon the earth because of mankind's curiosity.

However, beneath the bloodshed King's story masterfully probes the darkest recesses of the human condition.

At times, The Mist chills to the bone as characters are held hostage by fear and paranoia, ensuring their own survival by sacrificing the very people they should be protecting.

Friends and neighbours become sworn enemies, even more deadly than the acid-spitting giant spiders or mantis-like monstrosities that prowl the rolling gloom.

In the aftermath of a devastating storm, which uproots trees and decimates power lines, the sleepy community of Bridgton, Maine, is submerged in thick, choking mist.

Illustrator David (Jane) and his eight-year-old son Billy (Gamble) seek refuge in the local supermarket run by Ollie (Jones).

When one shop worker is killed by a multi-tentacled beast, the townsfolk face a battle for survival against a menagerie of carnivorous beasties like nothing they have seen before.

Harden is genuinely terrifying as a brimstone-spouting puppetmaster, sparking the film's most shocking sequence when one local is sacrificed to rousing cheers from her crazed acolytes.

Some of the visual effects aren't sufficiently polished and some of the supporting characters are thinly sketched but the downbeat finale certainly takes the breath away.