The Mist is a mostly straightforward movie that has a pretty negative view on human nature. When it seems the world is ending, how do people react? According to Stephen King and Frank Darabont—not well. Most of that negativity develops through the rise of Mrs. Carmody’s religious fanaticism. And while many people will focus on the descent into such fanaticism as the major theme, it’s actually a small part of a larger whole.
So let’s dive into the ending of The Mist.
The Mist ending explained
Different than the book
Stephen King’s novella is a first-person story that we eventually find out David Drayton has written late at night in the aftermath of the escape from the supermarket. He, Billy, Amanda, and Mrs. Reppler had driven from the store, along the turnpike, and finally settled at “this Howard Johnson’s near Exit 3”.
David explicitly says, quote: 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”; or even that great old standby: “It was all a dream”. It is, I supposed, what my father always frowningly called “an Alfred Hitchock 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.
David lays out their situation. They have very little supplies. Gas that will last another 90 miles. And while there’s a gas station nearby where they can siphon up fuel, it means being outside. If they stay, they have no chance. But to go means to risk it all. Especially since you don’t even know if the roads or bridges will be accessible. That’s the negative side of things.
But there’s a positive. Quote: In the manager’s apartment I found a large battery-operated multiband radio…. And then, at the far end of the AM band, just as I was reaching for the knob to turn it off, I thought I heard, or dreamed I heard, one single word. There was no more. I listened for an hour, but there was no more. If there was that one word, it came through some minute shift in the damping mist, an infinitesimal break that immediately closed again.
King lets the suspense of that word build as David’s narration jumps topics. He says: There is a restaurant here…. I am going to leave these pages on the counter and perhaps someday someone will find them and read them.
Then he returns to the word. I’m going to bed now. But first I’m going to kiss my son and whisper two words in his ear. Against the dreams that may come, you know. Two words that sound a bit alike. One of them is Hartford. The other is hope.
There are two implications. The most obvious is that David believes there are people in Hartford. That’s the word he heard on the radio. Not only people but safety, security, resources, etc. Be believes it was a message telling survivors to come to Hartford. That belief is why he feels hope. Maybe it’s not the end of days. Seems like a longshot, right? But that’s where the less obvious implication comes into play. King had revealed that we’ve been reading pages David wrote and left for someone to find. If we’re reading them, then doesn’t that mean someone found them?
The “found document” frame narrative is one of the great traditions of early gothic and horror literature. From Frankenstein to Dracula to the very first gothic novel ever written, The Castle of Otranto. This is how Otranto starts: The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The style is the purest Italian.
King would be very aware of that tradition. You can assume he’s playing on it, telling a modern gothic, and using the “found document” as a way to indicate that humanity found a way through the horror of the moment. So even though The Mist novella doesn’t provide an explicit conclusion, what’s implied is pretty clear: people survived. We just don’t know if that includes David, Billy, Amanda, and Mrs. Reppler. Ultimately, though, you’re left on an upswing, rather than mired in woe.
Bang, bang, bang, bang
Darabont’s version of The Mist makes pretty significant changes to the end. Obviously, David never makes it to a Howard Johnson. He never writes anything down. The group stalls out in the middle of nowhere and quickly decides it’s better to take their own lives than let the mist claim them. It’s not like any time passes, either. The car stalls, they immediately all come to the same conclusion, and then a few moments later David opens fire on the others. Real time, it takes less than 5 minutes.
2 minutes later? The military rolls up and the mist clears. Which understandably shatters David’s soul. If he had waited just a few more minutes, been less negative, a bit more hopeful, then everyone in the car would have survived. He would still have his son. Instead, his whole world falls apart. It’s pretty brutal to watch.
King’s conclusion was bleak yet hopeful. While Darabont’s is incredibly punishing. Why?
One answer is that Darabont’s is just more entertaining, in the sense of having a twist that really punches audiences in the jaw. The Mist came out in 2007 and that decade was defined by how successful The Sixth Sense had been in 1999. 2000 to 2008 had this glut of thrillers with shocking conclusions. Then Iron Man and Dark Knight came out and the whole industry shifted. But you had Memento, Usual Suspects, Identity, Secret Window, The Others, Saw, The Prestige, Gone Baby Gone, Old Boy, Donnie Darko, Atonement. So The Mist changed its ending to be more of the time.
But I would argue there’s thematic considerations. The entire reason David and crew left the supermarket was because of Mrs. Carmody’s religious fervor. Initially, people told her to shut up. As things escalated, though, and as she could spin events to fit her proclamations, more and more believed in her as a leader. Until they finally turn violent for her and kill the poor military kid. Not because he did anything but simply to give people someone/something to direct their anger. It’s fanaticism.
The film clearly positions Carmody as a villain. And David, Amanda, Ollie, and the others as sane, logical, good people. Yet. Those fantastic back at the grocery store probably all live. While the sane, logical, good people perish (or end up in a living hell). We ask once again, why?
I would argue there’s something being said about belief. And that doesn’t have to be religious belief. Just belief in anything. If David and the others had held out hope for a little longer, if they believed some solution would present itself, even in the midst of this mist of death, they would have been fine. Instead, they gave up. And the movie kind of seems to think that’s the worst thing someone can do.
What happened with Norm? He didn’t believe David. So opened the back door. And tentacles ripped him apart. What happened with the neighbor, Brent? The guys tell him about the tentacles and his first response is, “Gentleman, I’m sorry but I’m just not that stupid.” So he gathers a group of “logical” people and they leave…only to end up becoming incubator sacs for spider eggs. You could extend that to the military guys who hang themselves. Their guilt caused them to give up rather than try to make amends.
For much of the film, we, as viewers, have more information, so know better. We can’t help but feel superior to Norm. Superior to Brent. Superior to Mrs. Carmody. Most viewers will relate to David and Amanda. And because those two have been the audience surrogates, we may even understand why they’d make the decision they do at the end. Their loss of belief makes sense to us. Would you hang out in a car until you starve? Would you like to wander into the mist for a monster to rip you apart? It’s tragic…but it makes sense…
Until the military rolls through. And it probably hits you the same way it hits David. “Oh no. No, no, no. If they had only waited a few minutes!” It’s another instance of not believing anymore. Except this time we as viewers didn’t have the information to know better or feel superior. So you feel shocked and horrified and kind of bad. Especially if you thought you would do the same thing in that situation.
You’ve got to have faith
I wouldn’t say the big takeaway from Darabont’s Mist is a religious one. Rather, it’s existential. Faith is important because it’s the foundation of hope. Without hope, bad things happen. Look at the woman who went into the mist to reach her children. We see her in the military convoy, with her kids. No one at the grocery store had helped her because none of them believed she would survive. Yet she made it.
On the one hand, the woman’s survival is a little cheap. Based on the logic of the plot…that makes no sense. The monsters were everywhere. Even early on. So what was so special about her that she could make it through the mist when no one else could? Did she just get lucky? Did God protect her?
On the other hand, it works thematically because she had her purpose and pursued it. It doesn’t matter how seemingly impossible it was for her to make it to her kids. In a morality movie like this, action is more important than logic. She lived up to the positive ideals, so she’s rewarded. While David finally embraced the negative ideal, so he’s punished.
“But Chris, what about Mrs. Carmody? She had faith. Why was she punished?” Good question! I would say the big tipping point for her was when she started accusing others for lacking faith. What does she ask David and his group? “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you believe in God?” Her judgment of others is a form of disbelief. It’s a loss of faith in her fellow humans. She reduces them to “others” who need to be sacrificed to make amends to God (“expiation” she calls it). So even though she had her religious belief, she still embraced a negative ideal. And for that, she becomes an example.
Overall, King’s version of The Mist is bleakly optimistic. While Darabont’s is far more pessimistic. Even though the mist evaporates and David survives, he is broken by his son’s death. Living isn’t a victory. It’s hell.
The George W. Bush of it all
I can’t help but wonder if there’s a larger commentary. The camera leaves David and rises up to show a convoy of military vehicles loaded with weapons. Soldiers, on foot, with rifles. Others shoot flamethrowers. There’s smoke in the distance. Destroyed vegetation. And we know the military was to blame for what happened—Project Arrowhead opened up a door to another dimension. So even though at the end the military seem like saviors…they’re also the cause of the whole tragedy.
This was 2007. Only 6 years after 9/11, in the midst of Bush’s second term, years into the War on Terror. There has to be something there, right?
Okay, so I just wrote that then went interview hunting. I found a talk Darabont had with Mr. Beaks for Ain’t It Cool News in 2008. First, the interviewer brings up if the ending is conservative or liberal. And Darabont said: “Conservative!? Oh, no, baby! That’s an outraged liberal tract!” So he’s definitely, at the end, commenting on tragedy being a gateway for military power creep. Could the country, after this disaster, become a police state?
Later, though, he’s asked directly if he worked on The Mist prior to 9/11. Darabont responded: I think my idea for what The Mist was going to be was pretty intact prior to that event. I think what changed after 9/11 was my determination to make the movie. It felt like it was more relevant than ever. The issues it deals with are timeless: it deals with extremism; it deals with a mental condition of fascism; it deals with mob mentality. Those things have always been around, but it just went from being a timeless story to being a very timely story. To me. And that’s what really made me want to buckle down and do it. The intention was always there to do it, but [9/11] just sort of reinvigorated the need to do it.
Okay, so, yeah. My gut was right about the whole larger commentary on the military. I guess with this context, if I was going to make any amendments, it would be that Darabont might file my conclusion about belief/disbelief under mob mentality. When Norm dies, it’s because David can’t convince this mini-mob of disbelievers. When Brent leaves with his group, it’s because they reject what the “mob” has told them about monsters. When the woman leaves on her own, the mob’s fear means no one will help her. And what we see in the truck at the end is another mini-mob. David and the others were sane compared to Carmody. But, on their own, they become just as extreme.
To me, that’s just semantics. Mob mentality boils down to agreement or disagreement, which is a byproduct of belief/disbelief. So I think everything previously written still applies. But it is interesting to hear Darabont’s own word choice.
Cast
- David Drayton – Thomas Jane
- Billy Drayton – Nathan Gamble
- Stephanie Drayton – Kelly Collins Lintz
- Ollie – Toby Jones
- Amanda – Laurie Holden
- Mrs. Carmody – Marcia Gay Harden
- Brent Norton – Andre Braugher
- Jim Grondin – William Sadler
- Dan Miller – Jeffrey DeMunn
- Irene Reppler – Frances Sternhagen
- Private Wayne Jessup – Sam Witer
- Sally – Alexa Davalos
- Myron – David Jensen
- Woman – Melissa McBride
- Mike – Andy Stahl
- Ambrose – Buck taylor
- Morales – Juan Gabriel Pareja
- Based on – The Mist novella by Stephen King
- Written by – Frank Darabont
- Directed by – Frank Darabont
