You guys are misunderstanding the ending...

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IT never fails..there is ALWAYS some pathetic child (in this case, Stinger911 that thinks the reason why they like some dumb movie or ending is because they are SMARTER than the masses who hated it

Sorry, but we understood it just fine. You are not a superior movie watcher than those of us who hated the ending. IT is a stupid ending, plain and simple. Extremely unrealistic and it WAS put in simply to be a downer ending. Thomas Jane's character was portrayed throughout the whole movie as someone who would not give up. So to have him kill everyone WAYYYYY before he had to was nothing but a bad plot device.

If they wanted a downer ending that was MUCH better and more realistic, simply have it end with the gunshots. Then the WHOLE world would have been doomed.

I hated the ending because they didn't wait to do what they did, if they would have waited until they were in immediate danger then okay. I was happy to see Marcia Gay Harden's character get what was coming to her though lol.

I disagree... The ending was about choices. The whole film, we are led to believe that the Thomas Jane character is one who we are confident is always doing the right thing, but in reality, he was just as much a screwup as anyone else, even moreso, in many cases.

Like, how he didn't allow the burn victim to kill himself, instead choosing to lead the group to an ill-fated mission to the pharmacy next door where more people died, to get supplies, and in the long run, the burn victim dies anyway, in a way more angonizing way than would've been necessary.

He chose not to help that lady make her way home at the beginning to help her daughter, when in the longrun, its revealed had he gone with her, he might've saved his own family too, not to mention helping the lady.

He also got the soldier killed by extracting information in front of William Sadler's character who grabbed him and they sacrificed.

If the movie has a 'message' its this... Make wise choices. Don't let your ego trick yourself into believing you always know what you're doing. The safest way isn't always the best way.

Well, that's certainly one way of looking at it. I saw this in the theatre when it was released, and the ending had about 85% of the audience shouting out 'No!', 'WTF?' and 'Did he just kill his son? The hell?' then breaking out into annoyed laughter when the military appeared.

The ending really did not play well on release, and on a rewatch it still doesn't play well for me as a viewer. I greatly prefer the 'Hitchcock ending' of the novella which is many ways more terrifying, being ambiguous.

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"It's better not to know so much about what things mean." David Lynch

The ending is didactic. Meaning, it has a very explicit message it wants to impart to the viewer.

Don't buy it as there was zero lead up to the message there. As someone else pointed out it was this other writer's solution to SK's less than spectacular ending, and I found it psychologically cheap and depressing and more infuriating than inspirational. I was yelling at my phone to the idiot for not thinking things through rather than going 'oooh, so that's where the movie was going...' Who would have suspected such a tragedy other than a twisted minded writer. But still very creative. Needs a warning tho like an S rating for 'sick' or 'psychpathic' cuz I don't like movies like before I wanna smile for a few hours at least after watching the movie.