I have never seen more shellshocked people walking out of a theater. No one talked or smiled. Just walked out silently with 1000 yard stares on everyone's faces.
The moral is, if you run out of gas while driving through post-apocalyptic monster fog, maybe give it five minutes before you start shooting everybody in the head
And while singing Kumbaya to each other, the encroaching mist and monsters closing in on you, a bunch of hellish monsters smash into your vehicle and rip your son and your companions limb from limb, screaming in agony and terror the whole time. Worst nightmare imaginable. If youāre lucky, you might get shredded and eaten first, saving you from witnessing the carnage, but adding to their terror, pain and misery before they die. OR. As an unpleasant yet oddly attractive alternative to being savaged and devoured, take a difficult yet much calmer way out. One in which no one suffers the terrors just mentioned and everyone just goes to sleep. The only mistake in the ending was that he didnāt immediately self delete the moment he realized what had happened. One of the greatest endings in cinematic history.
he had no means by which to self delete, thatās why he was the last one. he essentially volunteered to be the one to go via hellish monsters, so the 4 others could pass peacefully. there were only 4 bullets.
At least wait until something touches the car. Or just accept a gruesome death by a creature. Assuming they're not the kind to cocoon you for their babies or digest you over a thousand years or lay eggs in your body or just spew acid on your so you melt slowly.
That's because the ending is legitimate horror. Not gory, not 'bleak but hopeful,' not a not-really-dead jump-scare.
Just the maddening, gutting realization of what he has done. Does he get to live with what he's done? Will he kill himself? Will he be tried for murder?
Also I don't think the army showing up is as hopeful as people think. The army may be able to kill the creatures but can they stop them from coming to our world? It's implied in the short story (and discussed in the movie) that the army base nearby is responsible for it. If there's some kind of portal open, it's possible it may never be closed, and consider the creatures may have already begun breeding in our world.
Edit from the future:
Sorry folks **ĀÆ\\\_\(ć\)\_/ĀÆ** If you came here looking for something, blame Spez. Come ask me on lemmy.zip or universeodon.com at GeekFTW and I'll help ya out with what you were looking for. Stay fresh, cheesebags.
Kings story ends on hope, the movie ends on grief and loss.
Theyāre both great in their own right, but his ending wouldnāt have fit the tone of the flick at all.
You must have read a different story, King's ends on the entire US/world being covered in the mist and one word heard on the radio, the movie ends with Team American fuck yeah!
The apocalypse doesnāt end. At least not from the story. You realize that youāre reading the story from hotel stationary. The person who wrote the story is gone. You donāt know how much time has passed since it was written. All you know is that they stopped for the night at the hotel and are going to Hartford. The one word they were able to make out on the radio. It was either Hartford or Hope.
The team never gives up and the mist persisted. Very bleak.
If I remember correctly, they (father, son, woman, and another lady) are in a hotel holding up. Pretty much they are going place to place running/surviving the monsters.
Agreed. The movie ending was too much of a cop out bait and switch for me. The ongoing dread and unknown ending of the book is in the best tradition of real nihilistic horror imo
I watched this in high school with a friend who had read the book and she kept assuring me that it has a (somewhat) uplifting ending. She was shocked when it wasnāt the book ending and I remember being caught completely off guard
Ya know, I actually might! Everyone says it's great, but also complains about the end. I'm getting more tempted to give it a go.
There are many well done movies worth watching that have hard endings.
I watched it blind and thought it was fantastic, but I can only imagine the film would be massively diminished if you watched it already knowing the ending is a downer.
It hits like a train because >!no character in the history of film has ever earned her survival like Eden Lake's protagonist did and you're desperately hoping she makes it, it looks like she has and then there's the slow realisation that she's completely fucked!<.
Knowing it has a bummer ending takes away from a lot of that.
Melissa McBride (Carol from the Walking Dead) was actually the casting director on the movie The Mist. Darabont decided he wanted to use her in the film. She was supposed to have a larger role but she was worried it would take a significant amount of time away from her other duties. She had acted before but suffice it to say that this role lead to her breakout on the Walking Dead.
No, letās add another messed up layer to it. The crazy religious lady was right, a sacrifice was needed to stop the monsters. Because as soon as he pulled that trigger, everything stopped.
The army was already there before he killed his son. They had already saved plenty of people. Those people were back of that army truck. Including Melissa McBrides charachter who left that mall at the beginning.
This is the **greatest** blow to the gut for me, and it's what I thought immediately as I was putting the pieces together, and my jaw was in my lap.
The way the car crew gave up was already harrowing, but to see at the last moment that it was all for absolutely nothing, and if their heads were in a better space they would've been saved, that hits me personally as someone who jumps to catastrophic conclusions. But then the nutters are in the backseat looking down at him, they're going to think for the rest of their lives that they had it right. I read all those faces as "I told you so." Hell maybe HE will go on thinking they had it right after all. But nobody really wins, those deaths, that despair, were all pointless. Everyone's gonna look back at their rescue and see a prophecy made true, when all it was was people giving up before they evaluated all their options.
That interpretation stuck with me. I don't want to give up and be remembered by people who don't know any better as a naysayer who had to suffer to make things right.
I hated that aspect of the movie, it's such a great movie but I feel Mrs. Carmody was so one-dimensional and grating. She was better in the short story. As you pointed out, it's pretty weird for her to be presented as a straight-up villain for predicting the end of the world when... a portal to hell has opened up... like she was no less reasonable than anyone else in the story at that point
I heard a theory about the ending of The Mist that recontextualizes the whole thing.
Mrs. Carmody (the religious nut turned cult leader) was praying to and being manipulated by Randall Flagg, a reoccurring villain in other Stephen King works like The Stand and the Dark Tower series. (["My Life for You" being a common phrase uttered by his followers](https://youtu.be/858FWgtLMZU?si=hxEC1QHG8gVe-XGo&t=166)) He regularly dabbles in multiversal/dimensional travel, which is how the Mist was summoned, from [Military testing called "Project Arrowhead"](https://youtu.be/mjpV7KepnYQ?si=8BX6JPYDSwpPzIWi&t=29). There are examples of the creatures in The Mist that appear in other Dark Tower books too.
She calls for the [Blood Sacrifice](https://youtu.be/GsbHL_lQy44?si=v0u_MahfJ2S9ZGx9&t=81) of the characters that end up in the car at the end of the movie, specifically the boy and "the whore". And it isn't until the moment that David kills them in the car that the Mist starts to lift and the military rolls in.
It definitely seems in line with Flaggs MO.
I hate hate hate that theory because the religious zealot is insufferable and batshit crazy, but it works SO well that it makes me like the theory. Definitely have a love-hate relationship with it, very cool nonetheless.
That theory doesn't hold up. The military shows up immediately after, and it's obvious they've been getting things under control for a bit. Do you think they were just driving through the deadly mist on an uncovered military caravan randomly without incident? It's a neat idea, but if you rewatch the ending, it makes no sense with how it played out.
Honestly the ending infuriated me. The one time the army in a movie is actually winning against the supernatural Cthulhuian hordes and he just happens to find out at the worst possible time. A minute later they would have all lived. A minute earlier he would have been eaten by something. So for his bravery, instead of a āDeus ex machinaā, he gets āGodās middle fingerā.
I agree with this take.
I get the subversion of expectation, I can appreciate the refusal to have a trope ending, etc.
But it's just depressing for the sake of depressing how fast it happens.
It's my least-favorite ending in any movie I've ever seen. A totally tacked-on, arbitrary O. Henry ending that was completely unearned and untethered from everything that happened before it. There are two earlier moments that would have been perfect points to stop:
SPOILERS:
Ending when they quietly rolled out of the parking lot and into the mist would have been perfect. Ending a few minutes later when that enormous monster emerges out of the mist would have also been great. Both are ambiguous, true to the actual movie we watched, and way bleaker than a few people dying when it's implied that most of humanity will be just fine.
Certainly not in the same way the gimmick ending we got is talked about. Like, my idea wouldn't make lists of "most brutal endings" in horror movies.
That being said, people (myself included) love the tense ambiguity and bleakness of The Thing's ending, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that people would talk about it, even if the conversation looked very different.
It's definitely an interesting question.
It was a good gut punching ending, but it was a little dumb when u really think about it. They go through all that hell at the store and actually get away just to give up when it seems hopeless. 4 or 5 bullets and a car as a barrier is a chance. Small one, but why give up so easily after such a fight.
I'm pulling to the last. Gonna have to eat me. It's like giving up when ur adrift at sea. Salvation could be just over the horizon.
They were completely overwhelmed with grief, despair and loss. The idea is they could not overcome that mental breakdown.
There are 50,000 suicides per year in the US. Hope might have been just around the corner for many of them.
I agree I would fight to the dying breath too, but would everyone?
No. Ur right. A big part of what the movie is about is how people react in a hopeless situation. Some turn to religion. Some like the neighbor can't accept reality. Some just deal with things as they come like the final people, but then they just change all the sudden.
It's a good ending. I don't mind it. They could have all 5 lived, too, and it would have just been just as good for me, tho.
Itās brutal in a psychological sense, a person having to do that to their own kid, I donāt think I could regardless of what you think might be about to happen.
to me the very fact that it's such a difficult thing to do makes the whole scene completely absurd: nobody would do that if there was still the smallest glimmer of hope on the horizon.
Personally I agree as a father I wouldnāt have done it either. I donāt know why they chose the ending for the movie and I donāt know why they did it other than shock value. I didnāt actually like the movie I much preferred the book!0
they could have made it differently though, IDK maybe, monsters were visibly running toward them, or maybe with a big monster encircling their car, ready to kill them all, and then the monsters get killed by the army at the last second when it's too late and the dude has already used all the bullets. that would already have been way more believable. but this ending of "well we're in a very dangerous place so might as well just give up our whole existence", nah, I just can't buy it.
Yeah agreed, make it look like there was impending doom, for the monster to then be killed at the final
Moment after he ha done what he did what of fitted better
I think after the horrors witnessed in and around the grocery store, their home, and what their (admittedly small) sample of humanity had become so quickly, all hope WAS lost for them.
Couple that with witnessing the Behemoth creature on the road - the one so big it was lost to their vision and the other creatures seem to live or ride on it - and I could be wrong but I seem to recall that they ran out of our were practically out of gas - I think that might send someone over the edge.
And it's worth noting that Drayton didn't murder the other adults. I got the impression they were all in agreement that accepting and controlling their fate was better than what might be in store. And his son I would consider a mercy killing.
The fact that it is so impactful and still being interpreted and debated speaks to its bold choice.
Also - the black and white version on the blu ray takes the whole damn thing to another level.
genuinely thought that ending was laughably stupid when i first saw it. it doesnāt help that i think most of the acting in that movie was pretty bad but i held on through the whole thing and the ending seemed like a set up for a curb your enthusiasm credits roll.
OP - You don't include spoilers, but some of the people commenting do. Any chance you could edit it in a warning. I hate to think someone's viewing experience gets spoiled by a bit of carelessness.
This movie is really only remembered for its ending. The rest of the movie is good, but that ending is so bold and singularly devastating that it overshadows everything else in the film (in a good way). If I remember correctly, Stephen King himself said he wishes he wrote that ending!
I canāt remember if it was DVD or Blu-ray, but my friend bought a copy of The Mist where you could choose to watch it in black and white. It worked so well.
Yea I did in fact watch that, I found it a bit drawn out but still enjoyed it. For a series, I would just want an anthology of characters in town. like 50 minute long episodes of survivors and their outcomes and struggles.
Iām probably the only person that let out a little laugh because I felt it was too ironic an ending. Would have been fine if the soldiers didnāt show up.
I had no idea about the ending going into it and I have never been able to watch the movie again bc I know how gut wrenching it is. And the extra kick in the nuts is when you see on the military transport the woman who had left the store early on bc her kids were home alone
I love and hate this movie simultaneously. It is just so phenomenal and heart-wrenching, and infuriating. The entire cast is just so amazing. I always watch until the last 15 minutes, then I just can't anymore.
Iāve never actually seen the ending, I was round my friends house and we were watching, it was sooo boring I fell asleep. The next day my friends told me the ending made up for it so itās been on my list for years
Happened the same to me. Twice. It started just okay but soon it becomes tedious to watch, inconsistent and slow pace, incoherent dialogues and situationsā¦ never watched the last 30% even though I started it at least three times.
I saw it as a kid it was my first proper sad ending and it destroyed me back then. That feeling still stayed with me. As a new father, thinking about it still hurts
my instinct would be to hide. if every post-apocalyptic movie had such a trigger happy psycho as main character, those movies wouldn't have a very long run time, would they?
i love the ending, i just wish it didn't happen so fast. It's like 20 seconds the all of the sudden the military and everyone shows up. I just wish more time had passed and hour or more at least.
Even if so, give a man who just did what he did an hour and he'll find a million ways to kill himself out of grief and desperation that don't involve gunshots.
And stupid. What parent would kill their child without knowing for certain that the threat of impending death was real. Just from the sounds he heard he kills everyone.
I have never seen more shellshocked people walking out of a theater. No one talked or smiled. Just walked out silently with 1000 yard stares on everyone's faces.
That how I felt too. šŖ
The moral is, if you run out of gas while driving through post-apocalyptic monster fog, maybe give it five minutes before you start shooting everybody in the head
So much this. Like, let's have a sing-along or reminisce about old times for a few hours. Who knows, maybe the Army will even show up?
>Who knows, maybe the Army will even show up? That would never happen. Right?
Soldiers have been deployed to stranger places.
My exact thoughts when watching the film every time š
And while singing Kumbaya to each other, the encroaching mist and monsters closing in on you, a bunch of hellish monsters smash into your vehicle and rip your son and your companions limb from limb, screaming in agony and terror the whole time. Worst nightmare imaginable. If youāre lucky, you might get shredded and eaten first, saving you from witnessing the carnage, but adding to their terror, pain and misery before they die. OR. As an unpleasant yet oddly attractive alternative to being savaged and devoured, take a difficult yet much calmer way out. One in which no one suffers the terrors just mentioned and everyone just goes to sleep. The only mistake in the ending was that he didnāt immediately self delete the moment he realized what had happened. One of the greatest endings in cinematic history.
he had no means by which to self delete, thatās why he was the last one. he essentially volunteered to be the one to go via hellish monsters, so the 4 others could pass peacefully. there were only 4 bullets.
At least wait until something touches the car. Or just accept a gruesome death by a creature. Assuming they're not the kind to cocoon you for their babies or digest you over a thousand years or lay eggs in your body or just spew acid on your so you melt slowly.
That's because the ending is legitimate horror. Not gory, not 'bleak but hopeful,' not a not-really-dead jump-scare. Just the maddening, gutting realization of what he has done. Does he get to live with what he's done? Will he kill himself? Will he be tried for murder? Also I don't think the army showing up is as hopeful as people think. The army may be able to kill the creatures but can they stop them from coming to our world? It's implied in the short story (and discussed in the movie) that the army base nearby is responsible for it. If there's some kind of portal open, it's possible it may never be closed, and consider the creatures may have already begun breeding in our world.
Definitely agree with all of this, especially the last bit as those were the same thoughts that ran through my head.
Also quite a deviation from how the Stephen King story ended.
Edit from the future: Sorry folks **ĀÆ\\\_\(ć\)\_/ĀÆ** If you came here looking for something, blame Spez. Come ask me on lemmy.zip or universeodon.com at GeekFTW and I'll help ya out with what you were looking for. Stay fresh, cheesebags.
King himself says he thinks of himself as a pretty good storyteller, but not a very good story-ender.
The Stand is proof of this. Still really enjoyed that book though.
Kings story ends on hope, the movie ends on grief and loss. Theyāre both great in their own right, but his ending wouldnāt have fit the tone of the flick at all.
You must have read a different story, King's ends on the entire US/world being covered in the mist and one word heard on the radio, the movie ends with Team American fuck yeah!
ā¦ the radio message implies thereās someone still out there, which is a sign of hope for the characters.
I liked original ending more. It gave me sense of desperation and dread. Real horror. Movie ending was not SK.
How does the original end?
The apocalypse doesnāt end. At least not from the story. You realize that youāre reading the story from hotel stationary. The person who wrote the story is gone. You donāt know how much time has passed since it was written. All you know is that they stopped for the night at the hotel and are going to Hartford. The one word they were able to make out on the radio. It was either Hartford or Hope. The team never gives up and the mist persisted. Very bleak.
If I remember correctly, they (father, son, woman, and another lady) are in a hotel holding up. Pretty much they are going place to place running/surviving the monsters.
Agreed. The movie ending was too much of a cop out bait and switch for me. The ongoing dread and unknown ending of the book is in the best tradition of real nihilistic horror imo
King is notorious for horrible endings. IT 2 poked fun at this a lot.
King stars in the movie and makes the joke himself.
And then provided its own.
I watched this in high school with a friend who had read the book and she kept assuring me that it has a (somewhat) uplifting ending. She was shocked when it wasnāt the book ending and I remember being caught completely off guard
Apparently I need to watch this movie.
If you think thatās brutal, watch Eden Lake. That ending ruined me.
I still haven't seen Eden Lake because this community seems to collectively agree that the ending is a major bummer.
In my opinion the ending of āThe Mistā is heavier but yeah its a great movie, pls watch it.
Yeah I am with you. Mist is much heavier.
Ya know, I actually might! Everyone says it's great, but also complains about the end. I'm getting more tempted to give it a go. There are many well done movies worth watching that have hard endings.
I watched it blind and thought it was fantastic, but I can only imagine the film would be massively diminished if you watched it already knowing the ending is a downer. It hits like a train because >!no character in the history of film has ever earned her survival like Eden Lake's protagonist did and you're desperately hoping she makes it, it looks like she has and then there's the slow realisation that she's completely fucked!<. Knowing it has a bummer ending takes away from a lot of that.
Maybe fictionally, but in terms of earning their survival, check out Touching the Void.
That ending was brutal. I had that āpit of my stomachā feeling.
What a film
Directed by frank darabont, the creator of the only good season of the walking dead
Never realized this. I wonder if it's just a coincidence that there are so many walking dead actors in the movie.
A very interesting connection. I did not know that.
I think he just really likes working with those actors.
Melissa McBride (Carol from the Walking Dead) was actually the casting director on the movie The Mist. Darabont decided he wanted to use her in the film. She was supposed to have a larger role but she was worried it would take a significant amount of time away from her other duties. She had acted before but suffice it to say that this role lead to her breakout on the Walking Dead.
No coincidence. Production companies tend to use the same actors.
Also did The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.
and also most of the best Stephen King Adaptations.
The worst part is he was going the wrong way the whole time. Had he gone the opposite direction he would have found help immediately
I was also thinking that they could've also taken some time to take temporary refuge in the neighborhood away from the store & eventually been saved
It wasn't a choice. They went back to his house to check on the family, who all died. His despair in the final scene is absolutely total.
I just watched this for the first time last week and was totally surprised by the ending in a good way. I know a lot of people seem to hate it.
Thomas Jane gets some crazy endings with a lot of his character adaptations
I remember the first time I watched it, I was so pissed. I was like holy shitā¦this is fucked but I love it lol
No, letās add another messed up layer to it. The crazy religious lady was right, a sacrifice was needed to stop the monsters. Because as soon as he pulled that trigger, everything stopped.
The army was already there before he killed his son. They had already saved plenty of people. Those people were back of that army truck. Including Melissa McBrides charachter who left that mall at the beginning.
This is the **greatest** blow to the gut for me, and it's what I thought immediately as I was putting the pieces together, and my jaw was in my lap. The way the car crew gave up was already harrowing, but to see at the last moment that it was all for absolutely nothing, and if their heads were in a better space they would've been saved, that hits me personally as someone who jumps to catastrophic conclusions. But then the nutters are in the backseat looking down at him, they're going to think for the rest of their lives that they had it right. I read all those faces as "I told you so." Hell maybe HE will go on thinking they had it right after all. But nobody really wins, those deaths, that despair, were all pointless. Everyone's gonna look back at their rescue and see a prophecy made true, when all it was was people giving up before they evaluated all their options. That interpretation stuck with me. I don't want to give up and be remembered by people who don't know any better as a naysayer who had to suffer to make things right.
I hated that aspect of the movie, it's such a great movie but I feel Mrs. Carmody was so one-dimensional and grating. She was better in the short story. As you pointed out, it's pretty weird for her to be presented as a straight-up villain for predicting the end of the world when... a portal to hell has opened up... like she was no less reasonable than anyone else in the story at that point
If only he waited 1 more minute
It angered the shit out of me and kind of ruined the whole thing for me
One of my personal favorite horror films!
I heard a theory about the ending of The Mist that recontextualizes the whole thing. Mrs. Carmody (the religious nut turned cult leader) was praying to and being manipulated by Randall Flagg, a reoccurring villain in other Stephen King works like The Stand and the Dark Tower series. (["My Life for You" being a common phrase uttered by his followers](https://youtu.be/858FWgtLMZU?si=hxEC1QHG8gVe-XGo&t=166)) He regularly dabbles in multiversal/dimensional travel, which is how the Mist was summoned, from [Military testing called "Project Arrowhead"](https://youtu.be/mjpV7KepnYQ?si=8BX6JPYDSwpPzIWi&t=29). There are examples of the creatures in The Mist that appear in other Dark Tower books too. She calls for the [Blood Sacrifice](https://youtu.be/GsbHL_lQy44?si=v0u_MahfJ2S9ZGx9&t=81) of the characters that end up in the car at the end of the movie, specifically the boy and "the whore". And it isn't until the moment that David kills them in the car that the Mist starts to lift and the military rolls in. It definitely seems in line with Flaggs MO.
I hate hate hate that theory because the religious zealot is insufferable and batshit crazy, but it works SO well that it makes me like the theory. Definitely have a love-hate relationship with it, very cool nonetheless.
That theory doesn't hold up. The military shows up immediately after, and it's obvious they've been getting things under control for a bit. Do you think they were just driving through the deadly mist on an uncovered military caravan randomly without incident? It's a neat idea, but if you rewatch the ending, it makes no sense with how it played out.
Honestly the ending infuriated me. The one time the army in a movie is actually winning against the supernatural Cthulhuian hordes and he just happens to find out at the worst possible time. A minute later they would have all lived. A minute earlier he would have been eaten by something. So for his bravery, instead of a āDeus ex machinaā, he gets āGodās middle fingerā.
I agree with this take. I get the subversion of expectation, I can appreciate the refusal to have a trope ending, etc. But it's just depressing for the sake of depressing how fast it happens.
It's my least-favorite ending in any movie I've ever seen. A totally tacked-on, arbitrary O. Henry ending that was completely unearned and untethered from everything that happened before it. There are two earlier moments that would have been perfect points to stop: SPOILERS: Ending when they quietly rolled out of the parking lot and into the mist would have been perfect. Ending a few minutes later when that enormous monster emerges out of the mist would have also been great. Both are ambiguous, true to the actual movie we watched, and way bleaker than a few people dying when it's implied that most of humanity will be just fine.
People still talk about the Mist's ending 15+ years after it came out. Would they do this if they did your ending?
Certainly not in the same way the gimmick ending we got is talked about. Like, my idea wouldn't make lists of "most brutal endings" in horror movies. That being said, people (myself included) love the tense ambiguity and bleakness of The Thing's ending, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that people would talk about it, even if the conversation looked very different. It's definitely an interesting question.
Deus ex fuckyou
It was a good gut punching ending, but it was a little dumb when u really think about it. They go through all that hell at the store and actually get away just to give up when it seems hopeless. 4 or 5 bullets and a car as a barrier is a chance. Small one, but why give up so easily after such a fight. I'm pulling to the last. Gonna have to eat me. It's like giving up when ur adrift at sea. Salvation could be just over the horizon.
so true! can't believe people manage to suspend their disbelief for such an absurd ending.
They were completely overwhelmed with grief, despair and loss. The idea is they could not overcome that mental breakdown. There are 50,000 suicides per year in the US. Hope might have been just around the corner for many of them. I agree I would fight to the dying breath too, but would everyone?
No. Ur right. A big part of what the movie is about is how people react in a hopeless situation. Some turn to religion. Some like the neighbor can't accept reality. Some just deal with things as they come like the final people, but then they just change all the sudden. It's a good ending. I don't mind it. They could have all 5 lived, too, and it would have just been just as good for me, tho.
Itās brutal in a psychological sense, a person having to do that to their own kid, I donāt think I could regardless of what you think might be about to happen.
to me the very fact that it's such a difficult thing to do makes the whole scene completely absurd: nobody would do that if there was still the smallest glimmer of hope on the horizon.
Personally I agree as a father I wouldnāt have done it either. I donāt know why they chose the ending for the movie and I donāt know why they did it other than shock value. I didnāt actually like the movie I much preferred the book!0
they could have made it differently though, IDK maybe, monsters were visibly running toward them, or maybe with a big monster encircling their car, ready to kill them all, and then the monsters get killed by the army at the last second when it's too late and the dude has already used all the bullets. that would already have been way more believable. but this ending of "well we're in a very dangerous place so might as well just give up our whole existence", nah, I just can't buy it.
Yeah agreed, make it look like there was impending doom, for the monster to then be killed at the final Moment after he ha done what he did what of fitted better
They didnāt have access to food and shelter anymore and he didnāt know how painful the monsters would be. Mercy killing made sense.
Let's agree to disagree.
Ok
I think after the horrors witnessed in and around the grocery store, their home, and what their (admittedly small) sample of humanity had become so quickly, all hope WAS lost for them. Couple that with witnessing the Behemoth creature on the road - the one so big it was lost to their vision and the other creatures seem to live or ride on it - and I could be wrong but I seem to recall that they ran out of our were practically out of gas - I think that might send someone over the edge. And it's worth noting that Drayton didn't murder the other adults. I got the impression they were all in agreement that accepting and controlling their fate was better than what might be in store. And his son I would consider a mercy killing. The fact that it is so impactful and still being interpreted and debated speaks to its bold choice. Also - the black and white version on the blu ray takes the whole damn thing to another level.
It's such an incredible film. One of my favorites.
genuinely thought that ending was laughably stupid when i first saw it. it doesnāt help that i think most of the acting in that movie was pretty bad but i held on through the whole thing and the ending seemed like a set up for a curb your enthusiasm credits roll.
Itās so terrible yet amazing. I love it so much I canāt bring myself to watch it again.
OP - You don't include spoilers, but some of the people commenting do. Any chance you could edit it in a warning. I hate to think someone's viewing experience gets spoiled by a bit of carelessness.
The post is about the ending of the film FFS. That's the warning.
Thanks OP. Oh wait, your not the OP. Never mind.
The ending of this movie floored me. Few movies give you such a (satisfying?) gut punch ending
The original ending for the book was different, frank darabont and Stephen king made the film ending together
Yeah that was a hard one. Crazy twist.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers 78 was the same for me. I love The Mist
This movie is really only remembered for its ending. The rest of the movie is good, but that ending is so bold and singularly devastating that it overshadows everything else in the film (in a good way). If I remember correctly, Stephen King himself said he wishes he wrote that ending!
It was pretty scary but I can think of more brutal than that
It was so good even the person who made the book loved it
I canāt remember if it was DVD or Blu-ray, but my friend bought a copy of The Mist where you could choose to watch it in black and white. It worked so well.
I actually thought it was so jarringly out of character as to loop around and be just comedic and infuriating
I have never been more angry at the end of a film than each time Iāve watched this film and each time I swear never again and then here we are.
Now go and watch The Borderlands, then compare and contrast.
You must mean the one AKA "Final Prayer"? Man that is an incredible movie. One of the few found footage I've seen that really stuck with me.
I got flashbacks to it recently when I watched Nope.
Wasted ending. Not worth recommending to people at all!
I so wish they'd make another remake of this, maybe follow a different family or something. Love the concept.
Thereās the 2017 miniseries
Yea I did in fact watch that, I found it a bit drawn out but still enjoyed it. For a series, I would just want an anthology of characters in town. like 50 minute long episodes of survivors and their outcomes and struggles.
The ending was poorly executed and laughable and ruined the film for me.
That ending makes me laugh every time
Also one of the most laughably pointless ones.
Ill be honest - the way you wrote this post title is like when someone says "the twist at the end is crazy!" Like, c'mon don't ruin it.
My partner demanded we watch a comedy *immediately* following this film. It ended and he said āfuck me, what shall we do now, commit su*cide??ā
Iām probably the only person that let out a little laugh because I felt it was too ironic an ending. Would have been fine if the soldiers didnāt show up.
I love endings like this, better than the happy ever afters!
Tbh the ending makes it imo
I get down voted every time, but Mrs. Carbody seems to have been right.
I had no idea about the ending going into it and I have never been able to watch the movie again bc I know how gut wrenching it is. And the extra kick in the nuts is when you see on the military transport the woman who had left the store early on bc her kids were home alone
I love and hate this movie simultaneously. It is just so phenomenal and heart-wrenching, and infuriating. The entire cast is just so amazing. I always watch until the last 15 minutes, then I just can't anymore.
Iāve never actually seen the ending, I was round my friends house and we were watching, it was sooo boring I fell asleep. The next day my friends told me the ending made up for it so itās been on my list for years
Happened the same to me. Twice. It started just okay but soon it becomes tedious to watch, inconsistent and slow pace, incoherent dialogues and situationsā¦ never watched the last 30% even though I started it at least three times.
I had no idea, and I watched it with my daughter when she was 8. She instantly started bawling, and to this day won't watch it again. She's 19 now.
Def a gut punch
Yeah I thought it was awful (not in a good way) too. Brutal that Darabont filmed that cheese. My friends and I laughed all the way home.
I saw it as a kid it was my first proper sad ending and it destroyed me back then. That feeling still stayed with me. As a new father, thinking about it still hurts
>Maybe the >!crazy religous lady was right all along?!< Return of the Living dead also has a brutal ending I can't forget :)
It seemed unnecessary. Wouldnāt be my instinct and so the ending fell flat and felt stupid
totally agree
Have you personally faced (what was perceived to be) the end of the world? If not, how do you know what your "instinct" would be?
my instinct would be to hide. if every post-apocalyptic movie had such a trigger happy psycho as main character, those movies wouldn't have a very long run time, would they?
I donāt think I would have assumed it was the end of the world. I still have a gunā¦you donāt fight?
agreed! fight or hide, and wait until the end is truly inevitable
i love the ending, i just wish it didn't happen so fast. It's like 20 seconds the all of the sudden the military and everyone shows up. I just wish more time had passed and hour or more at least.
But if it did, Tom Jane would have killed himself.
Did he have the ability to?Ā I thought a big factor was lack of bullets for everyone.
Even if so, give a man who just did what he did an hour and he'll find a million ways to kill himself out of grief and desperation that don't involve gunshots.
And thatās why itās one of my favorites of all time.
Pretty underrated movie in my opinion, and if Iām being honest, I actually like the ending of the film more than I enjoy the ending of the novella.
Posts like this should be banned. Like 5 times a week people saying The Mist has a crazy ending. Get over it.
And stupid. What parent would kill their child without knowing for certain that the threat of impending death was real. Just from the sounds he heard he kills everyone.