The Mist
Film | Film, reviews, stephen king, the mist 05/27/2008 |Last night, Prairie and I watched The Mist, the recent adaptation of an old Stephen King short story.
Short review: for the first 120 minutes or so, while we had some quibbles with the decisions made, it’s a remarkably faithful adaptation of the original story, and we were really enjoying it. Unfortunately, the last five minutes of the film completely ruined it for us.
If you rent it, I strongly recommend stopping it about five minutes before the end, right about the 1:20 mark. That would be a worthwhile ending, and one that’s more or less true to the original story.
Spoilers after the jump…
The basic premise is pretty well-known by now: a group of people trapped in a supermarket, surrounded by a otherworldly thick mist with Dangerous Things ready and willing to kill them if they leave. At the end of the original story, a small group of four or five people, including the main character and his young son, make it out to his car and start driving south, attempting to get out of the mist. The story ends very ambiguously, with no true resolution — just the hope of salvation as the characters drive on.
As Prairie and I were settling in, we agreed that our biggest hope for the film was that the director would be brave enough to keep that ending, instead of going with either of the two obvious cop-outs: killing everyone, or some deus ex machina that magically drives away the monsters.
Well, the director didn’t choose one of the two obvious cop-outs. He chose both.
We couldn’t believe it. We were already disappointed when it became obvious that the film was going for the “kill everyone” route — the car runs out of gas, there’s four bullets left for the five people, and after an ominous pause, the camera pulls back and we see four flashes as the shots go off within the car. David (the main character) gets out, screams in despair and frustration as he waits for some beastie to show up and finish him off…
…when a tank comes rumbling out of the mist, followed by soldiers wielding flamethrowers burning the mist and the monsters away, escorting a caravan of survivors. What? Oh, you’re kidding. Not just one disappointing cop-out, but two? Neither Prairie nor I have been this annoyed at a film in ages — not even the botched I Am Legend theatrical ending annoyed us this much.
This was even more surprising, given that the screenwriter and director was Frank Darabont, who did such excellent work with adapting The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile to the big screen. We were hoping that it was simply the studio wussing out, not being able to trust that their audiences could cope with an ambiguous ending, and forcing the new ending on the creators, but no — not only was this Darabont’s idea, but Stephen King approves of the change!
…Stephen King was out promoting The Mist and at a press conference…he went on record as publicly saying that he approved of and even “loved” the new ending. Here’s King’s official statement:
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.
Well, sorry Stephen, but I’ve gotta say I’m in strong disagreement on this one. Not only was the original ending far better, but this was certainly not the “most shocking ending ever” — unless you count my shock at how badly the ending was butchered. Sigh.
[See also: I Am Legend Original Ending | Just a quickie | The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | True Blood | An Ode to the Short Story ]
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7 Responses to “The Mist”
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Tim Who?
Michael Hanscom
jer@nyquil.org
May 27th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I completely agree. You might find some redemption of the ending from this YTMND.
May 27th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Ugh. It occurs to me, though, that The Shawshank Redemption suffered from the same thing. It should end about 30 seconds before it does, on a note of hope, not fulfillment. It’s not as awful as the change in The Mist sounds, but it has always bugged me that Shawshank was such a faithful adaptation right up to the very end, and then it diluted the whole message in the very last scene.
May 27th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Interesting — though I don’t think I’ve read Shawshank yet, or if I have, it’s been long enough that I don’t remember how it ended. Apparently Darabont has issues with King’s endings. Pity, that.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I agree with Josh’s Shawshank critique. Remind me to find the story for you, Michael. It’s well worth a read!
May 27th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
I was troubled by the ending as well, and it stuck with me all the rest of the weekend. Ultimately I realized what Darabont’s vision of the story was. Throughout the film, over and over, people who make rational decisions in light of all the craziness are ultimately punished, while those acting bug-nutty crazy are rewarded. Life is like that sometimes. Life is like that A LOT of the time.
The thing that stuck with me was the lady in the caravan looking at him coldly, her safe children in her arms, looking as if she were saying “if you had just escorted a lady home, yours would be safe too.” For going out into a bug-filled mist to get a crazy lady home to her kids is by far the more irrational of the two decisions; after all, they were relatively safe in the store… what could go wrong, right? He chose the relative safety in numbers, and it bit him in the ass. Even the use of the four bullets could be argued as a rational decision.
Sometimes what seems like the best thing you can do turns out to be completely the wrong one. That’s the way life is, but films generally not so. I ultimately decided that the ending is extra realistic, and while incredibly depressing, I thought it suited the story rather well. I think part of why King liked it is because it eeked out some meaning in the story he may not have consciously meant. I’m a sucker for vague endings — in fact, reading that story as a kid was my first introduction to them — but in the end I feel that the hyper-real “sometimes rationality does not prevail” ending is a superior one. I think that’s why people find it shocking. They’re not used to reality at the movies.
The thing I liked most about the film is that the really frightening things are all perpetrated by irrational people, not the monsters in the mist.
May 28th, 2008 at 12:46 am
Ya know my only quam with the ending because I didn’t read the story first was that it was so tragicly predictable. Had there been 5 bullets in the gun and the last scene was pulling away from the now everyone dead car with no magical myst flame throwers coming down the road I think i would have liked it a lot more. I think simple try as hard as youc an sometimes you don’t make it would have been fine.
Still I ‘get’ what he was after with this ending I just saw it comming soon as they said only 4 bullets and 5 poeople so it killed what had otherwise been a fairly unpredictable show for me again not having read the book.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:41 am
I have to respectfully disagree. While the ending in the book worked well for the book. Leaving the theater (I saw it opening night) I actually enjoyed the ending. I think I would have pretty much hated the entire movie at that point had they went ambiguous (which the book was meta too since he references his distaste for ambiguous endings and then leaves it unanswered, from what I recall).