Adaptation of Stephen King’s short story “Mist”, “The Mist” ends with a tragic and powerful conclusion, which differs from the original ending.
The Mist: stuck in the mist
With The MistFrank Darabont brings Stephen King’s work back to the screen after The escapees and The Green Line. Adaptation of the short story Mist, the film released in 2007 traps the characters as well as the spectators in a supermarket. Outside, a mist covers the small town of Bridgton, Maine, and hides gigantic creatures.
In the store, some organize themselves and try to keep their cool, while others give in to panic. Quickly, tensions erupt. Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Andre Braugher, Toby Jones, and William Sadler make up the cast of this feature film where the horror doesn’t necessarily come from the monsters invisible most of the time.
A shock ending approved by Stephen King
Warning, the following lines contain spoilers!
During the last minutes of The Mist, David, the main character, played by Thomas Jane makes a terrible decision. While he is in the car and he realizes that the creatures are now everywhere, he chooses with the other passengers to kill themselves rather than be massacred by the monsters. After shooting his son and the three other passengers with the remaining four bullets in his gun, he exits the vehicle hoping to die in the fog as well.
But military vehicles and soldiers appear, and the mist begins to clear. The hero yells at his desperate move, realizing the group was about to be saved. A cruel conclusion and tragic, thought by Frank Darabont for the film. Stephen King, meanwhile, opted for a suspended ending in Mist, as David attempts to drive a car with four passengers, including his son Billy, to the town of Hartford on what little gas he has left. But there is no confirmation that they survived or perished.
Asked by Yahoo! Entertainment in 2017, Stephen King assures that he is conquered by the contribution of Frank Darabontwhich he considers particularly audacious:
When Frank became interested in The Mist, one of the things he insisted on was that there would be an ending, which the short story doesn’t have (…) where the characters are stuck in the mist, out of gas, and the monsters are around. We don’t know what will happen next. When Frank said the ending he wanted, I completely agreed with him. I thought that was awesome. And it was so anti-Hollywood, anti-everything, really! It was nihilistic. I liked that. So I told him to go ahead and do it.
An unforgettable conclusion.
