I’m a long-time Stephen King fan. I grew up with him. The Shining was one of the first scary movies I ever saw, and it absolutely destroyed me. (All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and Mat a very, very scared one.) Cujo was one of the first adult-oriented novels I read, way back in the 5th grade. While in retrospect it wasn’t as frightening as some of his other books that I would later encounter, it left an impact, and I was hooked.
By the time I hit high school, I went on a tear, reading all of his published novels, both as King and under his Richard Bachman pen name. In college I read The Green Mile series one at a time, anxiously waiting each month for the next to arrive. Meanwhile, The Dark Tower series mesmerized me.
But there was nothing like The Stand, a book that I’m convinced will eventually join the ranks of great American novels. Thought-provoking, fluid, and as intricately-plotted as a Steinbeck novel. The writing popped and crackled, and after I read it, the first thing I did was to seek out the expanded edition, which I immediately devoured as well. But most of all, The Stand was terrifying, a horrific look at a post-apocalyptic world. Even the cover art was frightening. And although I don’t read too many King books now—maybe one every other year—I’ll always be a fan based on The Stand alone. Although I read it more than fifteen years ago now, it still haunts my dreams on occasions. Captain Trips, you freaked me out.
All of which is to say, you should check out his new film. The Mist by Stephen King which opens on November 21. There are two trailers online, noth of which are worth watching – be sure to note the timer bar across the bottom (it’s made from mist!). For San Francisco peeps, certainly, you may never feel the same way about the fog again.
This has been a sponsored post:
NOTE: This post was composed for research purposes for an article for Wired magazine.
