Aug 12 2008
The MIST, ending discussion. Spoliers alert
THE MIST, the long-awaited film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1985 adaptation finally got the big screen treatment it deserved, the result: Excellent entertainment with a crummy ending. The short novella came out to close to when John Carpenter’s film THE FOG hit the big screens and the works all though different had almost the same main idea. Frank Darabont and his team who worked with King’s work in the past (Honorably THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPITION and THE GREEN MILE), direct this very faithful adaptation to the short Novella. When after a bad storm, a mysterious mist hovers above a small town, horrors ensue, and it’s up to the survivors trapped inside a supermarket to make it out alive. The acting is great by Thomas Jayne, Andre Bauer, Jeffery DeMunn, William Sadler and Marcia Gay Harden. The monster effects are top notch and the thrills that happen in the story, happen faithfully in the film. Two hours go by and you have a great adaptation of the film…until the ending.
SPOILERS AHEAD. IF YOU DON’T WANT THE FILM TO BE RUINED DO NOT CONTINUE ON.
The ending in the novella is very ambiguous. A small group does escape from the shopping market and head south, with the hope of reaching some sort of civilization, and the story ends without us finding out what actually happens to our characters. The film writer wanted to be clear-cut and give us a definite ending to the film, which in my opinion ruined the entire two hours of what I had just enjoyed. It seemed that some hack writer couldn’t leave well enough alone and staged this ridiculous (SPOLIER ALERT) Suicide ending which made no sense to the characters and to the situation and it seemed almost down right mean. This said hack writer should have his laptop computer taken away and he should be bludgeoned with it. The ending to novella of THE MIST was perfect, scary and mysterious, but the ending to the film bought the entire thing to a halting, grinding, train wreck of an almost flawless film. The ending was similar to almost a ROMEO AND JULIET where tragic coincidences and time played a crucial role in the ending (If Romeo would have waited one more minute before he drank the unction he would have lived before Juliet would have awoken out of her coma). Thomas Jayne is faced to slaughter everybody in his escape car including his own son, and only to discover that help was only less than a minute away. The ending was like a slap in the face, where we see a woman who left the supermarket earlier on in one piece and a bunch of other survivors. This makes everything less scary and almost like an advertisement for the army (Scary creatures? Let the marines handle it). This is a big screw you to the audience because what Thomas Jane does is out of his character and just doesn’t adhere to common sense. Their vehicle runs out of gas and instead of coming up with another plan in less than two minutes they decide on a suicide pact and Thomas Jane goes through with it. Common sense would say wouldn’t you, I don’t know, look for another car, shelter, anything else but killing yourself? And here’s a failed opportunity for the filmmakers if their intention was to kill everybody at the end of the film, let the actually scary monsters do it, and at that point maybe we would believe that Thomas Jane would turn a gun on his son.
So my recommendation to anybody who rents this film, stop the film after the Jeep leaves the supermarket and you’ll save yourself a lot of antacid as well. I don’t understand a well-crafted multi-million dollar film with a solid script already written by a fiction master, being soiled by a non-conventional ending. Yes, I like downer endings (Wicker Man, the original one), but make it make sense. THE MIST unfortunately does exactly that . . .evaporate like a mist.
