In 1980, Stephen King published one of his most disturbing stories, a novella called
The Mist.
The story got even more disturbing when filmmaker Frank Darabont wrote a new ending for his
2007 movie adaptation.
The film's final twist devastated audiences, and it still traumatizes people today.
Here's what it all means.
So considering this movie's over ten years old, let's do a quick recap so we're all on
the same page.
The Mist tells the story of a dad named David and his son, Billy, who get caught inside
a supermarket when a mysterious and dangerous mist engulfs his small town in Maine.
Over the course of the film, we learn a few things: the mist is full of horrors, which
include deadly tentacles and giant wasps and pterodactyls.
We also learn that one of the store's patrons, Amanda Dumfries, carries a gun.
But before we skip to the end, there's one important moment that we need to touch on:
Before all the monsters show up, but after the parking lot has filled with fog, everybody
agrees to stay inside…except for one unnamed woman, played by Melissa McBride.
She's a mom who left her kids at home to do some quick grocery shopping, but with the
world falling apart, she can't sit around twiddling her thumbs.
She's got to get back to her kids.
Several people try to stop her, but she won't hear it.
And when she asks for help, everybody goes quiet.
Teary-eyed and disgusted, she curses the group...
"I hope you all rot in hell."
...and she strides into the mist, having faith she can get home in one piece.
It's a nerve-wracking and heartbreaking moment…and one we'll need to file away for future reference.
This moment comes around full circle and hammers some themes down hard.
Eventually, after the mist starts belching up monsters, tentacles, and tons of baby spiders,
neighborhood nutjob Mrs. Carmody, a bloodthirsty Bible-thumper who thinks the end times are
nigh, starts gathering followers who oppose our hero David and his allies' attempts to
stay smart and survive during the crisis.
Suffice it to say: this whole mist thing is pretty bad news, guys.
Eventually, the survivors inside the supermarket begin to turn on each other, Lord of the Flies
style.
A small group of allies join David and Billy as they escape from the store in the hopes
that whatever's lurking in the mist isn't as bad as the horror of human beings at their
worst.
Several of them are picked off by killer bugs, but the surviving members, David, Billy, and
three others named Amanda, Dan, and Irene, pile into a car and drive into the fog…
but not before David grabs Amanda's gun.
As they drive down the road, they see toppled telephone poles, wrecked cars, and a school
bus savaged by spiders.
They find the webbed-up body of David's dead wife, watch an enormous Lovecraftian creature
lumber by, and no matter how far they drive, the mist stretches on forever.
Eventually, they run out of gas, and as they hear the monsters outside, they make a decision:
a bullet is better than a bug.
David checks the gun, sees there are only four bullets for five people, and does the
deed.
He kills everyone in the car, including his son.
David is the only one left alive, howling like a wounded animal.
"AHHHHHHHHHH!"
Then, he starts begging for the monsters to finish him off.
"C'mon!
C'mon!"
But his despair deepens when seconds later, a military convoy rumbles out of the mist.
Adding insult to injury, David sees vehicles full of survivors, including Melissa McBride
and her kids.
The mist clears, and David is left screaming in pain.
If only he'd waited a few more seconds, his son would still be alive.
"AHHHHH!"
And on that cheery note, the film fades to black.
"That's all folks!"
If you couldn't tell by the end of the film, The Mist doesn't think very highly of mankind.
It shares a worldview with movies like Night of the Living Dead and John Carpenter's The
Thing.
According to The Mist, people are prone to paranoia and distrust, and will turn on each
other when things go south.
But at the same time, the movie is ultimately a message about the power of hope, and what
happens when hope disappears.
Speaking with Yahoo!
Entertainment, Frank Darabont explained The Mist works as a companion piece with his first
feature, The Shawshank Redemption:
"If Shawshank is the movie about the value of hope, then The Mist becomes a movie about
the danger of hopelessness."
So in the '94 classic, Andy Dufresne hangs onto hope and escapes from prison.
"I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really.
Get busy living.
Or get busy dying."
But in The Mist, instead of getting busy living, David and his companions do the other one.
While Andy keeps the faith and finds freedom, David gives up and loses everything when salvation
was so close.
And this is where Melissa McBride's character comes back in.
This mom marched into the fog to rescue her kids, even though everyone else was scared
and tried to stop her.
She never let go of hope, and as a result, she saved her children.
David, on the other hand, fell into despair and lost his son's life.
So what's the big moral of The Mist?
Even if life feels like a never-ending nightmare, be like that mom, because you never know when
the mist will fade away.
Both the novella and movie versions of The Mist are excellent, but they radically differ
when it comes to the ending.
While the film goes in a decidedly dark direction, King's novella is much more ambiguous.
In fact, the author actually leaves his readers with some hope that things will work out for
David and his crew.
Team David escapes the supermarket, but instead of committing mass suicide, David turns on
the radio and thinks he hears a voice say the word "Hartford."
Encouraged, he believes Hartford, Connecticut, might be a safe zone, and he heads in that
direction.
The novella ends with David narrating these final lines:
"I'm going to bed now.
But first I'm going to kiss my son and whisper two words in his ear…Two words that sound
a bit alike.
One of them is Hartford.
The other is hope."
And that's where the book ends, hinting that maybe Team David is going to be okay.
Obviously, Darabont decided to traumatize moviegoers, but Stephen King was totally okay
with the movie's new ending.
When Darabont asked for King's opinion on the nihilistic finale, the author gave him
two thumbs up.
King even famously declared that, quote, "anybody who reveals the last 5 minutes of this film
should be hung from their neck until dead."
"Okay, uh…"
We really hope he doesn't watch this video.
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