Sometimes, you just need an escape from the relentlessness of the Thanksgiving celebrations, and Hollywood has been there for you — at least, some years. Certainly, in recent years, there have always been a couple of oddball films coming out for T-Day — but in previous years, it was hit and miss. Here's the complete list of Thanksgiving counterprogramming of the past 25 years, including some stuff that's not science fiction but is in some sense genre film.

All movie titles link to IMDB or Box Office Mojo pages containing release dates:

1984

Supergirl A movie guaranteed to make you give thanks that you're never going to see it again — and a strong contender for the worst superhero film of all time. What I want to know is, what sort of guy sees his buddy blown thirty feet across the parking lot, and then decides to try and attack Supergirl using a switchblade?

1985

Rocky IV The good news is, it would inspire you to go get in shape after eating all that turkey and stuffing, thanks to one of the most classic training montages ever:

1986

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home The most fun of the original cast movies, this probably would have been a good one to escape to with your family. Although the famous "Shatner underwater" scene might have proved distressing.

Solarbabies I'm convinced there's something very broken about this post-apocalyptic rollerblading film, but at least on the surface it looks very wholesome. Except for the part where the woman with the huge shoulderpads says, "Lock it down and disembowel it."

1988

Cocoon: The Return I'm not sure anybody should have to deal with Steve Gutenberg on a full stomach.

1989

Back to the Future 2 Given that Marty McFly's mom gets bizarre breast implants and becomes Biff Tannen's bitch, this is definitely a good film for a family outing.

1990

Predator 2 The underrated cop drama/Predator attack movie starring Danny Glover... it's really not as bad as you remember.

Robot Jox This, on the other hand... giant mecha gladiators, fighting it out with chainsaw crotches and other armaments... this is what family is all about.

1992

The Crying Game Terrorists, thugs, and the great transgender panic of 1992. I bet you took your mom to see this one.

1994

Junior Pregnant Arnold Schwarzenegger, watching sentimental movies and crying a lot, will help you understand your own family. Really.

1995

Casino It's an underrated Scorsese classic, full of brutality and weirdness. Perfect Thanksgiving fare.

Nick of Time I may be the only person who saw this movie in the theater. Johnny Depp has 90 minutes to kill someone or other, or else Christopher Walken will kill someone or other. Mostly worth it to watch Depp and Walken overacting in a shopping mall. And for Walken saying, "I'll make you a sauce for that black Irish cocksucker's meat." I'm happy this and the Scorsese film were the main choices for Thanksgiving 1995.

1997

Alien Resurrection The whole time you're with your family, you can imagine you're actually hanging out with lesbian android Winona. Or you can just daydream about what this movie could have been if they'd filmed Joss Whedon's screenplay.

1998

Very Bad Things A sex worker gets killed at a bachelor party — and then things turn ugly. Probably just like your family gatherings. It does star Jon "Iron Man" Favreau, and it's directed by Peter "Hancock" Berg.

1999

End of Days Satan and Thanksgiving — and Arnie! They fit together perfectly! Satan is looking for his Bride... so it's about family and relationships and stuff.

2000

Unbreakable A horrific act of mass murder brings to light a guy who can find the rapists and creeps in our midst. It's light family entertainment — but it does deal with some real questions about the power of story. So yeah, probably a good one to get out of the house for.

Quills This, on the other hand — the Marquis De Sade! In full effect! I'm betting many of you dragged your entire family to see this.

2001

Black Knight Martin Lawrence gets zapped back to the Middle Ages, and presumably, goes medieval on their asses. Enough to make your entire family commit mass suicide, Heavens Gate-style.

The Devil's Backbone An early Guillermo Del Toro classic, and more proof that horror owns Thanksgiving. Your family doesn't deserve this movie.

2002

Solaris You could watch Steven Soderbergh's trippy-ass remake of Tarkovsky's classic while you're already wigged out on tryptophan. Why not?

Wes Craven Presents: They Or you could have seen this gem — they're coming for you!

2003

Timeline "Your father is in the 14th. century." Hey, maybe he can hang out with Martin Lawrence there!

2006

The Fountain And speaking of trippy movies when you're already stoned on tryptophan... at least your entire family will each have different opinions about what happened in this film.

Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny Jack Black! Rocking out! It's bound to make more sense than The Fountain.

2007

Hitman A video game adaptation about a guy who kills people and thwarts some vague conspiracy thing. Probably the purest example of counterprogramming ever.

The Mist Given the shocking, ultra-secret ending, this is an... interesting choice for a family occasion. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't watch this clip:

2008

Transporter 3 It's a threequel starring Jason Statham. How can it be bad?

Twilight You probably have at least one family member who's as creepy as Edward. So it's good to get some perspective.

2009

The Road And then we're up to this year's crop... this whole movie is as depressing as The Mist's ending. But at least it does have a genuinely pro-family message.

Ninja Assassin This is the film we'll probably actually be watching on T-day. Ninjas! Wachowskis! James McTeigue! Out-and-out mayhem!

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

If you want more Mist-related art thrills, check out the rest of Wrightson's concept art at the link below. And Fangoria has some Mist storyboards that are pretty fun (tentacles wrapping around legs and stuff) here. [WrightsonArt Forum]

This all started with a remake of John Carpenter's The Fog back in 2005, and these foggy mutant films just keep rolling in. Based on the box office numbers from the Fog remake and The Mist (it's just about to drop out of the top ten, where it debuted at #8), it's unclear why Hollywood is so into this trend.

The good news is that comic book publisher Studio 407, publishers of Night & Fog, signed a first-look deal with Myriad Pictures, and that means its indie properties will begin the arduous Hollywood development cycle very soon. While it's nice to see deals with companies other than Marvel and DC, we hope there will be a few original storylines tossed into the mix.

Myriad, 407 On Drawing Board [Hollywood Reporter]

It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last five minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead.

So, here's the skinny. In King's original novella, there are five survivors who make it out of the mist in David Drayton's car: David himself, his son Billy, Amanda, and Mrs. Reppler. They've pulled into a Howard Johnson's, and only have enough gas left to get about 90 miles. David finds a radio in the manager's office, and thinks he hears a single word in the static, although it's never revealed what that word is. Then he heads out to the lobby where his son is sleeping on a mattress, whispers "Hartford" and "Hope" in his ear, and the book ends. You don't know if they make it or not, and depending on what sort of person you are, you either imagine that they get rescued or think the bizarre mist creatures chomped them for dinner.

Frank Darabont wasn't satisfied with that ending and wrote his own. He didn't veer that far out of line, though, because King definitely suggests Darabont's ending as one possibility. In the film, there are five passengers in Drayton's Scout. Dan Miller, who gets eaten by one of the creatures in the book but survives in the film, has been added to the mix. David has Amanda's pistol, which has only four bullets left in it. The Scout sputters and dies as it runs out of gas, and David silently exchanges glances with everyone in the car, except his sleeping son. They nod wordlessly at him, and he pulls out the revolver. As his son wakes up and stares in shock at his father, the view cuts to outside the vehicle and four shots ring out.

At this point, David loses it a bit, and how could blame him? He's just killed three people and his son at point-blank range in the back of his car, while surrounded by an eerie mist that contains creatures unlike anything the world has ever seen. It's a wonder he hadn't snapped before this point. He begins screaming and points the gun into his own mouth, but of course it's out of ammunition. He stumbles from the car, shouting for the creatures to take him. An ominous sound grows closer and closer. Finally from out of the mist bursts... a U.S. Army tank, and behind it scores of half-tracks and soldiers, killing every creature in sight. If only he'd waited five more minutes. He sinks to the ground and wails in agony as the view cranes up into the sky and finally fades out.

It's an extremely tragic ending, but we love it. Why? Because it's realistic, and not a happy little package all tied up in a bow. We can imagine the studio suits meeting over a conference table and trying to convince Darabont to give it a happy ending, with the cavalry riding in at the last possible second, and little Billy yelling "Hooray!" while the tanks roll by. Instead we're given the stark portrait of what the sheer madness of the situation would do to you, and what extremes it would drive someone to. Nice job, Mr. Darabont. And Mr. King, if you still want to hang us, don't worry. We always save a shell for ourselves.

The Mist marks the fourth time that director Frank Darabont has turned one of prolific horror writer Stephen King's short stories into a film, and you think he'd have it down to an art form after directing The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. However The Mist represents a rare misstep for the Darabont/King moviemaking machine, though it does make for good grossout eye candy.

The film centers around David Drayton (Thomas Jane), who lives with his wife Stephanie and 11-year-old son Billy in a small Maine town and makes his living painting movie posters for Hollywood. During the opening scene, there's a self-referential nod as Drayton appears to be painting a poster for King's series The Dark Towers, complete with Clint Eastwood as Roland of Gilead. When Stephen King movies start having in-joke nods to other Stephen King books, we hear the faint revving sounds of a motorcycle preparing to jump a shark somewhere.

A storm hits that night, smashing through David's studio window and wreaking general havoc. Just before he and some neighbors head into town to get supplies, they notice a thick white mist spilling over the lake from the direction of the nearby Army base. And as they drive to town, they encounter several Army vehicles leaving at high speed in the opposite direction. After getting trapped in a mist-surrounded grocery store with all the phones out and hazy giant things bashing on the doors, the guys start to get the idea that maybe something's gone wrong over at the old Army base.

The film (just like the novella) then devolves into a fire and brimstone battle in the grocery store, with Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) calling this the "end of days" and telling everyone that god is raining down his retribution upon them. True, she sounds like a nutjob at first, but that first night enormous bugs begin landing on the glass windows, and it isn't much longer before giant pterodactyl-like creatures smash their way in and people start getting picked off left and right.

After they fight off this invasion, more and more people start believing Mrs. Carmody, and soon she is running the whole show, except for David and his lone band of holdouts. For a moment, the film hovers between fantasy and science fiction — will it turn out that this is a Satanic invasion, like in that forgettable movie with Hilary Swank? Finally, we discover that this isn't a supernatural occurrence after all. A bawling army private (Sam Witwer) confesses to Mrs. Carmody that the scientists at the army base were building a window into other dimensions, and that something must have gone wrong. Score one for science.

In an interesting move, Garabont makes us believe that Mrs. Carmody and her bible-beating are more dangerous than whatever awaits our heroes outside in the mist. Trapped between an evangelical and a bunch of Cthulhu creatures, David chooses monsters. We won't spoil the ending here, but it is very different than the one in the novella.

The main problem with the film is that the it is very clumsy and heavy-handed at times, clunking you over the head with an onslaught of stereotypes: the religious woman, the country bumpkins, the young lover, the "good father" and so on. Readers of King's fiction will already be familiar with these characters, but the introduction of multiple characters all in the same setting jumbles everything together. Plus the film's claustrophobic setting inside the store requires more complex characters to keep us watching. You soon find yourself longing for anyone to run outside and get eaten, just for a change of scenery.

Very Important Monster Rating: The larger monsters aren't displayed in very much detail, although there are plenty of closeups with the smaller ones. We would have loved a couple of solid looks at some of those big suckers.

If nothing else, the press release smacks of desperation. The Weinstein Company's announcement says the fog coated the LA area "in preparation for the opening of the highly anticipated Thanksgiving release The Mist." Then it says: "A publicity stunt? Or a eerily timed Stephen King-style wake up call to moviegoers? You be the judge!" [IESB] More news:

• Nicholas Cage will provide one of the voices for G-Force, Jerry Bruckheimer's live action/CGI project about a group of super-intelligent animal commandos. Cage will be a mole named Speckles. Steve Buscemi will provide the voice of Bucky the hamster, and Tracey Morgan (Saturday Night Live) will be a guinea pig named Blaster. [Moviehole]
• Stop ragging on my Batman movies, Tim Burton pleads. They were cutting edge, but they never got the respect they deserved. And they still don't. "Nobody really acknowledged the fact that ['Batman'] was slightly different at the time from other comic book movies. So lay off, will you?" [MTV Movies Blog]

• The two biggest SF magazines struggle with declining circulation numbers, says SF/comics author Warren Ellis. Ellis' post touched off a blogstorm about how (and whether) Analog and Asimov's can be saved. Apart from Charles Stross and Tim Pratt, few important writers have launched their careers in either magazine, argues John Scalzi. Not surprisingly, most bloggers think the Internet is the future of short fiction publishing. [Lou Anders]
• The fictional drink that stars in the viral marketing campaign for monster movie Cloverfield showed up in the latest Heroes episode. There are also many behind-the-scenes photos of various Heroes actors vamping with cups of Slusho!, which also appeared in an episode of Alias. At what point does "random" become the operative word in "random clues"? [Slashfilm]

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Not only has he directed the upcoming The Mist, but he's also been a tad busy writing Fahrenheit 451, which he plans to direct, and doing things like penning part of Indiana Jones IV and producing the Andromeda Strain miniseries. He also some time last year to direct two episodes of The Shield, so when is he going to find the time, and what does he have planned for The Long Walk?

According to Darabont, it's a project that's been on the back burner for awhile, but so was The Mist, and you can go see that in theaters in just a few days. It sounds like his back burner is a bit more active than most people's furnaces.