I have yet to read Stephen King‘s novella The Mist and truthfully I probably never will but I have heard how the ending of the movie is quite different than the provided in the novella and I would really like to delve into the new ending a bit.
Stephen King has gone on to give his approval of the new ending: “Frank wrote a new ending that I loved. It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last 5 minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead.” (Source: Cinema Blend). Since I do want to discuss how I think the ending fails I will first off warn you to not click the button nor should you read the comments which I am sure will contain spoilers if you have not seen the movie.
Of all the reviews I have read and heard everyone has heaped a fair amount of praise on Darabont for writing an ending that does not follow the usual Hollywood standard. I am willing to give him that he did create an ending that is memorable but I also do feel that it is a rather shallow ending. Since you are still reading this I will assume that you are either seen the movie or are fine with spoilers. The ending of the movie is not so much a twist but it does have an emotional punch so this is your last warning.
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The final scene involves the father, son and three others who have driven as far as their tank of gas will allow them and they are now in the middle of the mist with no where to go. There are four bullets in the gun and they have given up on all hope. The camera moves to the outside and we see the flash and hear the bang of the gun going off four times. The father exits the vehicle just having gone through the hell of having to not just three others but also his son. It is quite an emotional scene but it was at this point I started screaming “don’t do it” in my head because I had this bad feeling that I knew where
Darabont was going to head to next.
We hear what might be the roar of a monster, the “don’t do it” screams get a bit louder in my head because I can see it is going to happen and suddenly you see that no its not a giant monster its a tank and suddenly the mist starts to clear and everything will be fine now except the father has just gone through hell. In my mind Darabont did not do this to say that you should always just keep going and never give up, he created this ending to give it a twist but the twist for me ruined the emotional impact of what had just happened.
If I could rewrite the ending I would have the gun go off four times, the father steps out of the car with a look of horror on his face. The horror is not for the fact that he knows he will soon be ripped apart by the monsters in the mist but because he just went through something more terrible than any monster ever could inflict, that of killing his own son. The camera cuts to behind him as he slowly walks off into the mist and we then fade to white.
Perhaps I just want something different out of my movies but I truly do feel robbed of what should have been a quite emotional experience by Darabont‘s twist at the end. I for one just can not get over it being a slap in the face of everything that the father just went through.
I know that Darabont was going for ‘fear will drive people to do just about anything in the short term’ – for the long (LONG) non-fiction version of this theme used to institute political change since basically the 1960s, read Naomi Klein’s new book “THE SHOCK DOCTRINE” (but I Digress). Thematically, its an OK ending, but structurally it doesn’t make a lot of sense with the compressed time (I also had this issue with the closing minutes of CHILDREN OF MEN, everything happens too fast out there in that rowboat — In my mental version of that film the camera should have lingered on Owens face – Fade to Black – The Future is unknown). I only ramble on about Children of Men to illustrate that the ‘best’ ending of The Mist (IMO) would have been The Car. The Shots Fired. The Credits. (heck, I could have done with just the clicking of the hammer on the soundtrack over a fade-to-white. I could have lived with him considering the bullets, fade to white.) The ending is still ballsy to throw into a Multiplex popcorn film, but I agree with you that it could have been so much more.
That being said, I still very much enjoyed the Mist, even if it didn’t always hit its full potential.
Actually, it leaves me wonder what LARS VON TRIER’s THE MIST would have been like. You ever catch his TV show “RIGET” (aka The Kingdom)?
(Curiously, it was re-written for the US Television a few years ago by Stephen King as “The Kingdom Hospital”)…but I never bothered with that version. The Danish TV show is off-the-hook insane at times, especially when Udo Kier comes into the mix!
I didn’t read this post because I have not seen the movie, but props for having watched Riget.
I was lucky enough to see the first several hours of RIGET in the Cinema back in the mid-1990s one of the REP cinemas somehow got a copy of things on 35mm. I got the DVDs of the show a many years ago to foist on fans of the X-Files and ER, under the logic of having both in a single show which is far (FAR) better than either of those individual shows.
Also, I love Von Trier’s little Hitchcock intro/outro bits too. Yea, I’m a fan.
Comparing Riget to ER makes me question your sanity.
Have you seen Europa? Amazing film, if you leave out the final 30 minutes.
Actually it’s called Zentropa in america.
ehh. It’s the Hospital Drama aspect of thing thing. in 1995 ER was the biggest show on TV, so that was the hook for some folks (I never watched it myself, so you can question my ignorance too!). That and X-Files being at its peak of popularity as well, its an easy sound-byte: (“It’s like X-Files Meets ER!” – David Manning)
I’ve got the Danish Imports at home
You’re local (Denmark) right?
I am.
I’ve seen the bulk of Von Trier’s catalogue of work, but I’m missing a few (his latest “The Boss of it All” for instance) and Europa and embarrassingly, “The Idiots”
I rather liked the ending of the mist, although it seemed to be a bit more melodramatic than it needed to be. Here’re two scenarios that I THOUGHT I might see:
1) Click… BANG. Everyone’s dead. Then the camera pulls away up into the sky and we see that the car is only about 10 feet from the edge of the mist; where it is clear. (I guess this is sort of the ending already with an extra step taken to show military trucks etc. – except in my ending, the characters don’t know that they’re mere feet away from freedom – I like that).
2) No one dies. They sit in the car hoping for help; contemplating shooting themselves. The camera pulls back further and further and we see that the entire globe is covered in the mist.
I would have hated your #1 ending almost as the one they went with. The one thing that makes it a bit better is that they at least wouldn’t have known. It would still feel like giving the twist just for the sake of the twist.
#2 would have been okay and would have been better than what they went with but I do like the impact of the gun going off.
Perhaps it would have been cool just to end it with the shot from outside the car with the gun going off four times. It should be obvious that he would kill everyone else but it would just leave that little bit of doubt.
Andrew — As a big fan of the ‘pull back’ shot. I like you #2. That has really got a John Carpenter feel to it, yessireebob.
Something about the last 10 minutes of THE MIST that really makes me salivate for the film-version of THE ROAD. (I mention this explicitly in my original review, but it’s worth repeating here.)
#2 is the same ending as… well, an older film that is very similar actually. I’m hesitant to give it away.
HINT: It was on Jay Cheel’s top 5 Bug movies in their last podcast.
As a side note, I didn’t realize Thomas Jane was Todd Parker in Boogie Nights. Damn I love that character. I think I see a “Finite Focus” posting on my horizon.
Just as a heads up, I found the following on Amazon.com.
The Kingdom:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000WZAE86/
I have not seen the Mist, and I really do not understand this ending at all through your descriptions… I thought there were creatures with tentacles, and what, in the end it is a tank?
Hey rot,
I think he was trying to be a little vague – assuming that all readers had seen the movie. If you really want it spoiled for you, here goes:
MAJOR SPOILER ALERT HERE……
Spoiler…..
LAST WRNING… SPOILER!!!….
People trapped in a supermarket. Tentacles and giant insects/spiders in th mist killing everything they come across. The final five people decide to make a run for it in their truck to see if they can clear away from the mist. They drive as far as possible before running out of fuel. They are still in the mist with the creatures so all seems futile. The main character has a gun with only 4 bullets left. So he shoots everyone in the car so they are not subjected to the horrors of the creatures in the mist. He then gets out of his car screaming (one of the people he had to kill was his own 8 year old son). As he’s screaming at the creatures to take him and end his suffering, a giant tank appears out of the mist along with a huge military convoy and plenty of refugees/survivors. If only he had waited 1 minute before killing his friends and his son, they all would’ve been saved.
thanks Andrew, now I understand.
hmmm.
Let me just say that sort of idea for an ending has already been exploited in a certain Van Sant film I hold in high regard. Yeah the tank would have pissed me off I think.
Kurt, I love Von Trier as well and it was the Idiots (which I was lucky enough to see in the theater) that really clued me in to his sense of humor, which is the key to understanding his work.
I was disappointed by Boss Of It All but it continues on with his latest obsessions so it’s probably worth seeing.
As for the Mist, the ending was classic twilight zone nihilism. I don’t know how anyone can complain too much.
Here’s an ending I thought about during the movie.
They escape the super market and make it to the truck.
Thomas Jane turns the key in the transmission.
Sound of the transmission whining in vain.
Everyone get that look of doom in their eye.
Transmission keeps crying.
Credits.
OK guys….here goes:
the book ending of the mist was that they drive for days and never get out of the mist, so on one of their stops the father commits the entire story to paper and leaves it on the counter of some delli to be found by any survivors.before that, he finds a cb radio and tries to get any reception and see if any other people are transmiting.somewhere along the dial he hears a wors..one word..that vanishes to static.. the word is hartfors, so the father assumes that hartfors is out of the mist or has survivors. and thats it…King uses the open ending a lot and not every time it’s falls to the benefit of the story.
since cinema hates an open ending, Darabont had to rewrite it, but he remained true to his favorite writer, by taking a grim ending and making it grimmer. “THATS LIFE” Darabont says, and says it well.
p.s. to the comment above this:
the word the father hears in the book is HARTFORD…sorry about my spelling, I don’t write as fast as I think;)
minus the overbaked score, i thought The Mist ended on a solid note. it wasn’t pretty, but it earned the shock. and john, while i like your idea for what the ending should be, i got the emotional response that you were looking for with darabont’s ending. there was a crushing horror in drayton’s reaction to killing everyone in the car. it seemed to me that he was almost begging the monsters to relieve him of what he had done by destroying him. the tanks showing up was just a twist of the knife; insult to injury, if you will. i didn’t think that the would-be military salvation diluted the weight of what he did so much as it emphasized it. to me, it made its last statement one of judgment. it said that human nature is corrupted at its core, and then nailed that statement home by showing the dangerous irrationality that comes from fear.
and i hate to go against the grain here, but i can’t stand von trier. the man’s a pompous snot. my sister keeps trying to sell me on Breaking The Waves, and i know i’ll see it (and probably enjoy it. she’s got good taste in film), but almost everything else i’ve seen of his has left me wanting to pour napalm on my face.
Yes, breaking the waves is good. But Von Trier in general sucks.
@teddy nitro
which of his films have you seen?
THE ENDING PISSED ME OFF! It was completely un called for! At least when people like shakespear did it it had a purpose an meaning, but that ending was just to make it as sad and twisted as possible. It ruined the entire movie for me. I knew to exspect a sad ending ,Like almost all steven king stories have, but geez really? why? If they would have cut out the army I would have been fine. But the whole movie he makes you fall in love with these characters and then bam! I mean, all the moments with the little boy, he really played on your compasion for the kid. OH AND THEN! He even has to….
SPOILER!!!!!!!!!
… Have you scared that the crazy god fearing…nice lady..is going to kill the boy. I mean just when I feel releaved the boy didn’t die.. he dies any way. AND HE HAS TO HAVE HIM WAKE UP RIGHT BEFORE IT HAPPENS! I mean come on! He could have cut some of that out.
Come on, I think the one of the movie it’s a GREAT ending: it shows that even the rational people, the only ones who didn’t get into the religious madness and really tried to fight to survive til the end.. well, they also can be completely wrong when making choices under the huge power of fear.
In another hand, it’s also a completely ironic twist to see that, in the end, the people who survives are the rednecks of the supermarket, showing how life can be absurdly injustice.
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
I suppose the more attached you are to kids there is an inherent dislike for the ending here, or refusal to connect with it, maybe?
I still dont know what to say about the ending. I dont have a passionate defense of it or anything, but I’m happier with it that I would have been some ambiguous or happy ending. I can only imagine what if it ended with them driving off and then they put the final scene at the end of the credits
I for one seriously disliked the Darabont ending, so for fun, I did something about it, and created a fan edit of the film, which includes an entirely new ending, based on the novella finale…
http://www.karcreat.com/MistNovellaCut.html
…hope you ‘book ending fans’ dig it.
K