The Mist Movie’s Original Ending Was Even Nastier
Director Frank Darabont’s 2007 movie adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist has an infamously harsh ending, but it was almost even nastier.
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Director Frank Darabont’s 2007 movie adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist has an infamously harsh ending, but it was almost even nastier. There have been a few directors lucky enough to adapt multiple King stories, but Darabont is the most common pick for filmmaker most able to successfully transport the author’s work into the visual medium. 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption is considered by some to be one of the greatest films ever made, while 1999’s The Green Mile earned great reviews and multiple Oscar nominations.
Darabont’s third and final King project as a director was The Mist, which – as usual for horror – was mostly overlooked when it came to awards, but received positive reviews, and is often cited by King’s constant readers as a terrific adaptation of his novella. King himself also loves the film. The only real point of divide is The Mist’s ending, which differs greatly from the book, and is hands down one of the most depressing, gut-punch conclusions in the history of mainstream horror.
As anyone who’s seen The Mist no doubt recalls, protagonist David Drayton (Thomas Jane), his young son, and his fellow escapees from the local supermarket lose all hope of survival, with David using his four remaining bullets to euthanize them. He steps out out of his car in anguish, only for the mist to begin receding, and it to become clear that the military is defeating the creatures and restoring order. David is left to scream, seemingly having lost his mind. But it turns out, at one point Darabont wanted to twist the knife into David and the audience even further.
The Mist Movie’s Original Ending Was Even Nastier
The sad implications of The Mist’s ending are pretty clear. Not only would David’s son and friends have all survived if they had just waited mere minutes before deciding to die, but the military is coming from the opposite direction, meaning if David had driven the other way, he’d have reached help hours earlier. Prior to filming The Mist’s final sequence, Darabont hit upon the idea of making things even worse for David. He decided that instead of just the military arriving, and David seeing that Melissa McBride’s character – who had begged for company when she left the store early on to look for her kids – had survived, a second truck of survivors would go by.
That second truck was planned to contain multiple characters David and his group had left behind at the supermarket, including most of Mrs. Carmody’s followers. So not only would David have to live with the knowledge that if he had driven the other way, his son would still be alive, but he would also see that Carmody was right, at least partially, as if they had just stayed in the store and waited, help would’ve come and they would’ve been saved. As for why Frank Darabont didn’t go with this idea, it all comes down to scheduling. By the time Darabont formulated the notion, many of the actors he would need had already left The Mist’s Louisiana shooting location, as they had wrapped. Instead of going to the trouble of getting them all back on set, he went with the ending seen in the film.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/mist-movie-original-ending-nastier-why/