As far as horror movies go, The Mist (2007) is top-tier. Based on a Stephen King novella, The Mist focuses on what scares us. Though the film pits a collection of unlucky townies against a group of deadly monsters, it also tells an incredibly human story of what causes us to fear one another.

Director Frank Darabont focused on the idea of fear while creating the film, as he explained during an interview with MovieWeb.

“It's an examination of people operating in a pressure cooker of fear where fear replaces reason,” said Darabont. “That's why I've always loved this story. It wasn't so much about the mist outside the windows with the groovy critters in it. It's about what the people are going through inside the market, and it winds up being pretty real and pretty disturbing because there's nothing scarier than human nature and human behaviors. That's why I thought the thing had some muscle.”

Darabont used the film as an opportunity to deconstruct fear, to examine why it drives people to do extreme things, especially in survival situations.

“It's about fearing fear itself, it's what it does to people,” said Darabont. “How does it wig them out?” How does it compel us, you know? Does it bring us together? Does it tear us apart? Do we make mistakes?”

Stephen King seemed to agree with the director’s understanding of the film. “I think of fear as a survival function,” said the writer. “In the stories that I write, the only thing that I've tried to do is provide people with nightmares, which are really safe places to put those fears for a while. “You can say afterwards, ‘Well, it was all just make-believe anyway, so I just took my emotions for a walk.’”