MovieChat Forums > The Mist (2007) Discussion > Thoughts on the ending

Thoughts on the ending

posted 8 years ago by kylopod
16 replies | jump to latest

Just last night, I finally got around to seeing this film. (I read the novella way back in the 1990s and also heard a badly acted audioplay adaptation of it; somehow I missed the film when it first came out in 2007.) My basic reaction: I liked it a lot. It's not perfect, it's marred by some weak CGI, but overall it's a very involving thriller. There were moments when I was surprised by how absorbed I got--like the scene with the rope, which seemed at first like it would be totally predictable yet had me literally shaking when it was finished.

Before I talk about the movie's (controversial) ending, I should make the point that there's a long history of good horror movies with weak or copout endings. Some examples that come to mind: the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the original Nightmare on Elm Street, The Babadook (one of the best horror films of the last couple of years). Creating the right note for a horror ending seems to be tricky, and it's not surprising that it often gets botched even in some of the better examples of the genre.

Back to The Mist. After reflecting on it a bit, unlike some people I actually did not so much mind the concept behind this ending. But somehow it lacked the impact it should have had, maybe because it was done in such a heavy-handed manner that it made me overly conscious of the plot manipulation. First, it had the business with the four bullets. Then there was the matter of the mist disappearing at the exact moment he exits the car to face his doom. Most importantly, I think it was a major error to stick in that final line, "They're dead...for what?" It wasn't believable he would have spoken those words out loud, and it was underlining something that was utterly obvious to us. The scene would have been far more effective if it had ended with him saying nothing, with simply the look of devastation on his face getting the point across.

This wasn't the only time the film employed dialogue that was a bit too explicit about its themes. There was also that groan-worthy conversation between the characters about how people become like animals once the barriers of civilization are removed--as if we hadn't already figured out for ourselves the Lord of the Flies vibe to the story. Fortunately there weren't a lot of scenes like that, but it made these particular moments stick out more.

So what I guess I'm saying is that I could have accepted this ending if it had been executed more smoothly, with less of a sense that it was trying to pound the point home.

[–] malley321 8 years ago

"They're dead...for what?"

That line is not in the movie. What are you on?

[–] kylopod 8 years ago

Watch the final scene again:

https://youtu.be/ktqNNsVJhUE

Go to 4:55, when he drops to the ground. That's when he says the line. Granted, he sort of mumbles it, and I can understand if you missed it, especially with the music in the background. I watched the movie with closed captioning, and I admit upon second viewing of this scene that I didn't realize how quiet and understated the line is.

[–] malley321 8 years ago

Well I'll be damned. I've seen this movie 3 times and did not discern any words out of that until you mentioned it. I always thought it was just random sobs/him choking up before he bursts out crying. That definitely ups the cheese factor.

[–] debunkerboy 8 years ago

Really enjoyed your thoughtful take kylopod. But even if the execution of the ending idea was a bit heavy-handed I don't think that had much to do with my visceral repulsion. When I try to imagine an ending I could live with I can only come up with ideas that would ruin Darabont's grand conception. (fear is the real killer). I don't see how cleaning up a few nuances in execution will change much but I'm open to any further ideas you may have. Perhaps you could flesh out how you would have it go?

I think what bothered me was the way the group of plucky fighters seem to suddenly decide to call it quits. They dispose of Carmody, evade numerous threats in close-combat, generally stand in contrast to the others, warped by fear (Darabont was thinking Bush and Iraq here), as relatively level-headed representatives of humanity, fight greatly for a chance to escape to the relative safety of the car and the open road and then just passively run the car out of gas and call it a day without so much as a discussion. It's their abrupt arrival at surrender that feels crudely contrived to set up what appears, out of context, to be a snappy ending with a killer twist. (what was the rush that brings you to a place where you would shoot your own kid? Were the approaching sounds supposed to have driven Drayton to act immediately? This holds no water. Consider all that they have faced! All that they have learned. We know the monsters don't invade closed structures, and they have driven unmolested for miles, were they really in imminent danger in the car? And look how their predicament is framed. Where was the expected effort to avoid the empty gas tank by changing cars, or siphoning, or maybe look for shelter as the gas got low? Your child is with you! Are you really going to assume that a hundred mils into Maine is a fair sample of what you might find a thousand miles away? "We could look for gas for our perfectly good car and our perfectly good people but nah, let's just shoot now! Yea! Let's shoot now and figure it out later!" Were we supposed to assume these expected efforts took place? All of this rushes through your mind as you try to deal with this. It is important, I believe, that you stop to properly process your incredulity before you leap to the conclusion that the writer must have known what he was doing and it is your own sensibility to blame. ("Damn if I will be the soft-stomached one to object. Maybe Darabont is just a very brave arteest and I'm a wimp".)

Almost all defenders of the ending presume that haters, whether they will admit it or not, are simply offended by the horror of it and want a happy, Hollywood, ending, but as a fan of horror films with brutal endings this strikes me as a facile and convenient justification. I just don't see how this could be the real issue. I'm happy with killing the kid, it's just a movie!, but don't try to slip this character thing right past me. The Serlingesque concept of a Dad blowing his own kid's head off when he didn't need to has a sort of irresistible appeal to it but it seems rather obvious to me that it has the shine of fool's gold and must be resisted. It is irksome that Darabont, in his grandiosity, was so wed to it. What is wrong is the glaring, fundamental violation of the expected character/behavior of the protagonists we have come to identify with and that is unforgivable.

Interestingly even the great majority of lovers admit that the ending action seems a bit rushed but they have no problem in forgiving this as a minor issue. Perhaps fixing this would have made the film too long, they tend to speculate. If this were the case you could fix this problem by simply showing a montage of failed efforts to find more gas or shelter. But this fails! Why it fails is key to understanding the difficulties in using Darabont's idea of a mercy kill come too soon. If Drayton and his crew seem to expectedly arrive at the idea of killing the child and themselves, in a way we can believe, then the end will lack both shock and surprise and will fail to deliver the message of the film itself. If they arrive there unexpectedly we feel violated. If there is a middle ground here I can't picture it but maybe, maybe, a really great writer could have pulled it off.

How could you use Darabont's idea? My only fix is have a different Drayton. Make him cynical and defeatist and willing to 'play god' and then when he decides to take matters into his own hands before hope is well and truly exhausted he gets punished. But this entails a whole different story leading up. Darabont had the problem of finding a proper movie ending for an existing King story. What he tacked on simply did not fit the story he was working with. This seems obvious to me and I think you have to simply ignore this problem as you swallow down what Darabont is pushing, making the same mistake he did which is to fall in love with a superficially beautiful but false conception and rationalizing away your gut feelings in the process.

I've gone on long enough! You can find my long opinion here:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0884328/board/thread/252595354

[–] malley321 8 years ago

I had the idea that David and his crew could reach a point in the highway where they know there is nowhere to stop and take shelter for several miles. They see that they are low on fuel, and David asks the group if they should find a place to take shelter, or chance it in hopes of getting out of the mist before they run out of fuel. The rest of the group, dreading having to spend another night (and possibly longer) locked up in a building and desperate to see daylight again, insist on risking it and going forward. This would have provided a better set-up in my opinion, or would have at least explained why David seemingly drives until he runs out of gas without ever discussing the matter with the others.

[–] debunkerboy 8 years ago

I had the idea that David and his crew could reach a point in the highway where they know there is nowhere to stop and take shelter for several miles. They see that they are low on fuel, and David asks the group if they should find a place to take shelter, or chance it in hopes of getting out of the mist before they run out of fuel. The rest of the group, dreading having to spend another night (and possibly longer) locked up in a building and desperate to see daylight again, insist on risking it and going forward. This would have provided a better set-up in my opinion, or would have at least explained why David seemingly drives until he runs out of gas without ever discussing the matter with the others.

That would help with the clumsy framing of their predicament by better explaining the running out of gas, which otherwise appears too passive. We expect this much based on their determination to survive already demonstrated.

I still wonder though if we can reach a point where the mercy kill seems both understandable and premature. If it does not feel premature then the message about fear and hopelessness is weakened or lost and we get a bit clued about what is coming next. I guess I just expect this Dad to do whatever he can to avoid shooting his own, breathing kid, who still has a fighting chance. Funny how this ending is kind of a blue dress/white dress thing hinging on this very question. Opinion is truly divided.

I'll leave you with a snippet from The Village Voice review which sums up my feelings:

All this would be disappointing, but not infuriating, if the film's ending weren't so unforgivably bad. Darabont abruptly abandons his master's text in the movie's final minutes, sending Drayton and his little boy a plot twist that wouldn't be fair to reveal, but which is so distasteful and untrue to all that's come before it as to be a slap in the face to characters and audience alike. The last word in King's story was "hope," and while Darabont certainly has the right to head in the opposite direction—in our own monster-filled world, happy endings are harder than ever to buy—he does so in a manner that's both pretentious and cruel. The Mist made me want to scream, but for all the wrong reasons.

[–] kylopod 8 years ago

Were the approaching sounds supposed to have driven Drayton to act immediately? This holds no water. Consider all that they have faced! All that they have learned. We know the monsters don't invade closed structures, and they have driven unmolested for miles, were they really in imminent danger in the car?

I think the bottom line is that they determined they had very little chance of survival. I take the point that we never see them looking for gas or shelter, but the fact is that, one way or another, once their gas was finished they had nothing left to do except starve to death, or be eaten by the monsters, or await rescue. And the chances of rescue must have seemed very bleak at that point. In the supermarket there was at least the possibility that the mist only affected a relatively small area. But once they drove for miles and miles and found no sign of an end to the problem, it disabused them of the notion that they could find their way out. For all they knew the mist could have spread over the entire earth, and even if it didn't, they had no way of knowing if escape was even possible.

Given that their chances of survival were slim, and that they knew being killed by one of the monsters was a pretty horrible way to die, it makes sense why they'd have preferred the barrel of a gun. Even so, I suspect that if David had been alone the whole time he'd have persevered and would have been fully willing to go down fighting if that's what it took. I believe it was his son that changed his mind. His son made him promise not to let the monsters get him. And while I know that scene was put in as part of the manipulative setup, it made some sense on its own terms. He didn't want his son to suffer a terrible death, and he would have done anything in his power to prevent it.

[–] debunkerboy 8 years ago

I guess it either strikes you as out of step with all that has happened or not. I submit it strikes EVERYONE as out of step and that the only defense is to go back and revise your feelings with rationalizations about not being able to imagine their fear and all that.

Of course if we take them out of context and ask what a normal man might do if he is out of gas and facing a monster apocalypse then Drayton's action seems at least roughly plausible (though the horror of shooting your own kid probably trumps the possible horror of a hard fought monster death and they DID still have the bullets for later if "push came right down to shove") but we can't take it out of the context of the film. We can't ignore what was left out in the convenient framing, or the demonstrated willingness to fight. You can't ignore the visceral non sequitur. You can't do all that just to give Darabont his killer twist - that's cheating - that's being blown away by a shocking twist and deciding to just forget the rest. If Darabont wants to make a serious film about serious issues (which he has mistakenly decided to do with a creature feature) then he must be held to account instead of just saying 'wow, what a killer twist, forget the rest".

The 'promise' really means very little. Of course you know your kid is terrified, so are you, beyond any complacency you may have had, of course you will do everything to save him, making a promise to do so is just a reassurance to him of the implied promise of being a Dad. If you don't already live and breathe this promise then you have a problem. When the time comes you will do whatever you believe is right for the child, not to arbitrarily fulfill a promise you really didn't even make to begin with (since the kid says nothing about a mercy kill).

[–] kylopod 8 years ago

Of course if we take them out of context and ask what a normal man might do if he is out of gas and facing a monster apocalypse then Drayton's action seems at least roughly plausible

It isn't "out of context"; the basic situation itself is a plausible outcome, even if the movie glosses over some of the details leading up to it. They could have tried to look for a gas station, for example, but they might not have found one, or they might have found one that was destroyed or nonfunctional. They could have looked for shelter, but they might not have found anything that looked safer than staying in the car where they at least had a chance of reaching the end of the mist. All of those are believable possibilities, even if the movie doesn't address them.

though the horror of shooting your own kid probably trumps the possible horror of a hard fought monster death

I don't know about that. Putting aside the sci-fi context, family murder-suicides of this sort (as in wartime) are not unknown historically.

We can't ignore what was left out in the convenient framing

I've already said I think the movie botched the execution of the ending. It wasn't developed enough, and it was handled in a highly contrived fashion in which the plot manipulation was very visible. I think they should have showed more of the process leading up to the situation, and I think the rescue shouldn't have happened so abruptly. But I'm not convinced it wasn't doable, even while maintaining David's character.

The 'promise' really means very little ... making a promise to do so is just a reassurance to him of the implied promise of being a Dad.

I got that. It was clear he was just saying it to reassure the kid and that he had no idea whether he'd be able to keep the promise. Nevertheless, his desire to protect his kid from a fate worse than death (which is essentially what it was--think of what happened to the military guy in the spiderweb) is something that I can definitely see might have led him to make a different choice than if he'd simply been battling the monsters by himself.

[–] debunkerboy 8 years ago

I've already said I think the movie botched the execution of the ending. It wasn't developed enough, and it was handled in a highly contrived fashion in which the plot manipulation was very visible. I think they should have showed more of the process leading up to the situation, and I think the rescue shouldn't have happened so abruptly. But I'm not convinced it wasn't doable, even while maintaining David's character.

So imagine we try to fix this problem. Show them making some further efforts, show a more gradual loss of hope. The kind of things you say 'could' have happened but weren't shown, then when the car stops we will know what is coming, we will accept it as more or less reasonable, there will be no audience mentally screaming "not YET!", and no message about keeping your head in the face of fear. When the army shows up the message then is just that fate is cruel and inhuman. That at least would be believable but Darabont would never have gone with that - his whole point is that fear creates a self-fulfilling prophecy and this will be the ultimate fear induced outcome - death by your own hand. Thus I think his failure to be more subtle is intentional, central to the message.

If there is a way to have the ending and be true to the characters and our vicarious investment I would accept it but I'm not sure it is even possible.

[–] kylopod 8 years ago

That at least would be believable but Darabont would never have gone with that - his whole point is that fear creates a self-fulfilling prophecy and this will be the ultimate fear induced outcome - death by your own hand. Thus I think his failure to be more subtle is intentional, central to the message.

I'm actually not sure he had any message in mind at all; it felt more like an exercise in trying to pull the rug out from under the audience. Which is part of my problem with it. As a rule if you see too much of the hand of the filmmaker in a particular plot development, it usually kills any "message" the film may or may not have been trying to convey. In a way, what Darabont did here was kind of a dark version of what Shyamalan tried to do at the end of Signs: use an incredibly contrived series of plot coincidences to prove the existence of God, only in this case it was a trickster God playing an unbelievably cruel prank on the protagonist. That's pretty much what it felt like to me. Which threw me right out of the story, and probably explains why ironically I did not feel very emotionally affected by the ending even though I had found the movie very involving up to that point. I felt cheated.

In fact, it reminds me of an anecdote Stephen King himself once related at the beginning of one of his anthologies. A fan told him how much she had enjoyed a previous volume of his, but she added that she skipped the notes at the end because she didn't want to learn "how the magician does his tricks." Recalling the incident, King wrote indignantly: "I am not a magician and these are not tricks."

I'm not sure I agree with him--in a sense all storytellers are magicians--but I liked his attitude anyway, because it suggested he has an aversion to thinking of his craft purely in terms of technique and manipulation. And I don't think it was an empty boast either. King has his flaws as a writer, but there's real passion in his works that I don't always sense in even his most talented rivals in the genre (such as the more calculated Dean Koontz). Reportedly, he loved Darabont's ending to The Mist, but I get the feeling that if he'd been the one to execute it, he'd have done it more convincingly.

[–] debunkerboy 8 years ago

I'm trying to remember if Darabont ever explicitly said what the point was. The theme of the film, the tagline on the poster, was "fear changes everything" and that was pretty much the idea of the King story and seemed further emphasized in the film. At every step the humans do the wrong thing and end up causing their own demise. We have panic, suicides, reckless bravado, foolish denial, ill-conceived remedies, etc. and then religion, LOL, ok, not mainstream religion but a primitive version complete with human sacrifice. It's a real microcosm of human futility in the face of "fear itself".

Jump to the end and it turns out all Drayton and his crew had to do was hang on a little longer. I see this as a continuation of the theme. They lose hope before hope was well and truly exhausted. Fear finally causes the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy. Who didn't crack? The "lady with the kids at home", who, with a courage and clear-mindedness perhaps motivated by pure love, has somehow made it home to her kids and now rides by on the convoy.

I have read quite a bit of King but I didn't read this story until after seeing the film and had no idea the ending would be different from the original. I was quite sure of my emotion. It was a mixture of sadness, at the obvious cruel irony and tragedy, but also anger that I had been cheated or deceived. I was so sure that King could never have made an ending with such a false note I immediately came here to discover it was indeed all on Darabont. (That King says he approved means very little to me. He "liked" the TV version of "under the Dome" too, which manifestly sucked, and probably quite a few of the other bad adaptations. He is a bit of a mercenary about these things and he's also tight with Darabont who did Shawshank and Green Mile.

I think there is a reason King left the ending open. The real monster was Carmody, the real drama was about the humans, not the inter-dimensional invasion, which was just a pretext for what happens in the store. The novella closes with Drayton and his crew holed up in a deserted motel, and true to form, still hopeful of refuge in Hartford. The bullets are there if "push comes right down to shove" (my italics).

Tacking on a new ending with a very different direction was never going to be easy but I think Darabont was wildly over-ambitious for the reasons I have stated. As a side note Darabont has said he sees a parallel to Bush and Iraq. Formless enemy, misguided over-reaction etc. Carmody as George Bush basically, in which we end up mindlessly killing what we love long before the monsters get close. In sum, I think he had a message here.

edit: Having said all that I must admit that, in isolation, the 'meaning' of the ending is really unclear. I still think Darabont was aiming more or less for the theme.

[–] kylopod 8 years ago

Jump to the end and it turns out all Drayton and his crew had to do was hang on a little longer. I see this as a continuation of the theme. They lose hope before hope was well and truly exhausted. Fear finally causes the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy. Who didn't crack? The "lady with the kids at home", who, with a courage and clear-mindedness perhaps motivated by pure love, has somehow made it home to her kids and now rides by on the convoy.

I agree with that interpretation--but the point I've been making is that these themes could have been explored in a less heavy-handed manner.

I was so sure that King could never have made an ending with such a false note I immediately came here to discover it was indeed all on Darabont.

King seems to like using ambiguous endings where the fate of the main characters is left up in the air, and his ending to "The Mist" is a good example of that. It isn't the first time Darabont has de-ambiguized a King ending; he did it with Shawshank as well, though in that case I liked how he handled it. (I haven't read The Green Mile, so I don't know if there are any differences to the ending of the movie and book versions.) King has actually botched some of his endings before; in fact he has somewhat of a habit of dramatic overkill, and sometimes he ends with a deus ex machina that comes out of nowhere (as in The Dark Half). Some of the movie adaptations of his works have found smoother and simpler ways to end his stories than he did without compromising the story's essence (Secret Window is a good example). Nevertheless, it's hard for me to imagine King doing what Darabont did here; he's just not the sort of writer to pull "twists" that feel like thumbing his nose at the reader.

As a side note Darabont has said he sees a parallel to Bush and Iraq. Formless enemy, misguided over-reaction etc. Carmody as George Bush basically, in which we end up mindlessly killing what we love long before the monsters get close.

Personally I think that's BS. A lot of writers in the 2000s liked to say they were commenting on Bush and Iraq, because it made their works sound relevant and topical. It's also a bit like when Shirley Jackson claimed "The Lottery" was about the Holocaust (again: BS!). Horror has a long history of being seen as veiled social commentary even when the creators deny consciously intending it that way (see the original Night of the Living Dead as being about Vietnam, racism, etc.), and while I'm not dismissing all such interpretations of any work, period, there's a great capacity for seeing whatever one wants to see.

[–] Druff (1805) a year ago

Based on how Darabont has spoken on the subject in interviews, I got the sense that this ending was done almost in a spirit of mischief. He described it as "a Twilight Zone style of ending." It's not meant to be heart-crushingly emotional and dramatic, it's more in the spirit of "WHOA HOLY SHIT NO WAY DUDE I CANT BELIEVE HE DID THAT BRO hey man pass me that joint."

[–] sadpopcorn (1318) a year ago

Hated the ending. Enjoyed the premise greatly.

Never read the book, but all these horror pictures do is kill everyone off in the end.

[–] KutWrite (1317) a year ago

1. A YouTube video on this ending gives for me the best spin to Darabont's ending: Those with hope survive the situation, those who lose hope, lose their lives. This is borne out by our not hearing screams from the lone woman who leaves to help her kids, and the neighbor who leads a group out to get help. In fact, at the end, one of the stake-trucks that goes by shows the lone woman and her two kids gazing at Drayton. However, this motif has logical holes in it.

2. I disliked the whole film; it's been done better, e.g. that recent film in which everyone has to be quiet to not get eaten. Too many dumb-move-plot-pusher character choices, e.g. turning all the lights on when it's obvious the big bugs are attracted to light, and too many cookie-cutter personalities, some of whom (e.g. Jim), make 180 character changes for the sake of "Holy Mother Script."

I felt sad for fine actors like Frances Sternhagen and Wm. Sadler who tried hard to make it work, but whose talents were wasted.

I won't read the book. Stephen King is too formulaic and wordy for my taste. I have liked three of his products on film, though: "Carrie," "Misery," and of course "The Shining," his disapproval of which strengthens my dislike of his style.