Major spoilers ahead for The Mist. It’s a masterpiece, so if you haven’t seen it, watch it, then come back.
If you were to ask horror fans to call on a twist ending more harrowing than the ending of Frank Darabont’s The Mist, I would bet hand over fist that they would be hard-pressed to find one.
The Gut-Wrenching Final Scene of The Mist
Watching it alone at night, I remember it clear as day. The car running on empty finally peters out. It’s just the slate grey fog of death outside, and all too clearly on the inside our survivors. As the horrors whisper outside, the car’s occupants all carefully exchange looks, practically looking back at you as you watch, forcing you to become part of this horrible exit strategy. David shows the revolver, then counts out the bullets. Four. It’s not a scene of many words, but the ones Amanda says are louder than any screams could be.
“But there’s five of us.”
The last shot we get is of Billy looking up at his father. Eyes wide, before—
A low-to-the-ground exterior shot of the car. Staggered muzzle flares and muffled gunshot noises. And the silence after is only broken by staggered wails of pain from the surviving David. Back inside, he tries to finish himself off, spinning the empty chamber with the quiet clicks of the gun aimed at his own. When I first saw this scene, I almost got nauseous seeing that shot. Which is why it only gets worse; with no other way to die, he exits the car and calls for the mist’s denizens to take him…only to be greeted by the military, driving caravans of heavily armed soldiers and rescued civilians.
Emotional Impact of The Mist’s Twist Ending
After the second wave of jaw-dropping shock washed over me, I felt David’s collapse to his knees in my legs, and as the credits rolled, I was left mulling over the experience in abject horror for the next few days. And so began a long-running entanglement with the story. The Mist is my favorite Stephen King adaptation of all time, and it’s in no small part for how its final scene is so brilliantly orchestrated by both the cast, Rohn Schmidt, and director Frank Darabont. And the way my love of The Mist originally spurred me to learn more about Stephen King’s expanded universe and got me into The Dark Tower series, a rewatch of the film spurred me into finally reading the novella.
So, I came to discover that the ending of The Mist is drastically different from its source material.
The Novella’s Ambiguous Ending Explained
Those who have read the novella know it ends in a way that outright rejects the film’s conclusion. As David writes his final journal entries in a motel with his son, and the other survivors who escaped, things look just as bleak. Navigation in the mist means gambling on infrastructure still being intact, with a close call on a possibly collapsing bridge having already been evaded. The supplies are running low, and with their car out of gas, it means venturing out to refuel. He notes:
“But you mustn’t expect some neat conclusion. There is no And they escaped from the mist into the good sunshine of a new day; or When we awoke the National Guard had finally arrived; […] It is, I suppose, what my father always frowningly called “an Alfred Hitchcock ending,” by which he meant a conclusion in ambiguity that allowed the reader or viewer to make up his own mind about how things ended.”
Technically both things happen in the film’s finale, to a much bleaker extent in the wake of what David has done to spare his son and friends. But book David ends up sitting by a crackling radio awaiting some sign of life as he’s all out of options. The only things he hears are two words, which he whispers into the ears of his dreaming son: ‘Hartford’, and ‘hope.’
Why Did The Mist’s Movie Change the Ending?
Truly, for a film that is so accurate up until that point, with so many scenes lifted whole cloth and recreated perfectly from the text (the spider-silk scene still makes me shiver in both film and on the page), it begs the question: Why change the ending?
Well, there’s the obvious answer of it simply being the best choice on a technical level. Darabont has mentioned in previous interviews that the movies many alternate endings didn’t resonate on an emotional level (even King thinks it hits harder than his penning). And the fact that one of them involved a cut to black and a gunshot after Billy says “Daddy?” makes me thankful the iron hand of studio interference didn’t force them to choose one. The Mist is one of those movies of a perfect length, no dragging, no rushing, and the delicate balancing act of editing the rest of the film sets you up on makes for the greatest gut punch when it all comes tumbling down in that final scene.
Themes of Hope in The Mist’s Film vs. Novella
The movie is the most memorable version because its ending shows the primary horror of the mist is what happens when the fog is lifted, and you’re forced to confront the reality of the things. The question then is what happens once you get what you’re craving? Can you go back to life as usual having seen what you’ve seen? Can those “puny doors of human perception,” as David puts it, tolerate it having seen what they’ve seen?
In the book however, we never see that Mist lift. There’s the very Lovecraftian possibility that the time of man came and went without much ceremony from the powers that destroyed it. It might never come back. So, what do you have when it doesn’t pass, and the monsters aren’t killed? The only thing that’s left when Pandora’s box has been emptied: hope. And how much is hope worth?
Philosophical Differences in The Mist’s Endings
So beyond the practical difference, I would posit a philosophical difference in the endings, or at the very least an inversion of the theme. Both iterations of The Mist are fundamentally about hope, but in two very different regards: hope is given up in the film, and the cosmic irony almost immediately punishes David for only needing to stay hopeful for a few more moments. In the other, David’s hopefulness, though uncertain, still stands up to the insurmountable odds ahead, possibly leading to doom.
There’s certainly room for the ending to mean the death of David and his crew. Depending on how you interpret the novella, David is shaded as having already gone mad. He emits loud, uncontrollable laughter in moments of crisis, such as the death of the bagboy, sometimes seeming to have already succumbed to the mist and its unreality.
David’s Madness and Parallels to Miss Carmody
This makes him a stronger parallel to Miss Carmody. One of Stephen King’s quintessential villains, Carmody’s madness is uncontained and outwardly hysterical, harassing and assailing whomever she sees as being due for judgment by the wrath of God. But as composed as David is, there are cracks in his composure that suggest the mist could equally pollute his mind; after all, nobody is immune. By the end of the book, is David just as deluded as Miss Carmody? Were their chances ever any better on their own? Does his misplaced hope let him walk off into the mist to risk it all?
The book’s ending is scary in its own right, simply because of the common ground the two versions share. Both share themes of hope, more specifically, the danger of hope and either losing it, or losing yourself to it. Which fate is more painful is still up for debate.