yeah the ending sucked the book ending is way better (i actually laughed at him when everything went rolling past him)





good movie, tho.

ignoring the book for a second, the movie had to end the way it did but i don't feel like typing all this shit out again so here's something i posted on my livejournal addressed to steel who basically said the same thing about the ending that you did

ps WOAH SPOILERS ugh fuck don't read my post

"steel you are kind of wrong about The Mist's ending

considering the way frank darabont ended it (with drayton killing everyone in the car), the mist had to disappear. granted he also could have ended it the way stephen king ended it but i haven't read the story yet (i think my friend has it though so i'll check it out) so i'm not going to compare the two. but if you consider the context of the movie it kind of had to end that way.

ok before i go on to explain WHY im also going to mention that he probably could have ended it with drayton also killing himself and THEN the mist clears; regardless, the fact of the matter is that if he killed his son then the mist had to clear either way, otherwise it would have been... inconsistent, i guess.

actually steel you are smarter than i am so you were probably already aware of this but just in case!!

basically ms. carmody was a psychic or a prophet or something (and since this is stephen king we're talking about there's just about a zero percent chance that all her predictions were just LUCK). she knew from the beginning that the mist was death, she knew the locusts would come, she knew they wouldn't come when they sacrificed that army dude, etc. etc. obviously there was some deal about the seven plagues, the locusts being one of them. i can't remember all the plagues and i don't think they were all in the movie but they had least had some sort of significance.

then before drayton and co. leave the store ms. carmody says WE WANT THE BOY. passover? first born son? that was the last plague, wasn't it? but he doesn't give him to her and the mist stays and they drive off and they run out of gas and WHOOPS they're fucked.

but then drayton kills his son (and "the whore" too for that matter) and the mist clears.

so yeah, the mist had to clear. maybe i misinterpreted you and you were more angry at the fact that drayton is alive than the fact that the mist clears then yeah i can see where you're coming from, that is kinda gay (THE... THE IRONY...) but whatever dude it was handled pretty well if you ask me and didn't ruin the movie at all.

also i think my plague theory might be flawed. ignore the PLAGUE part and just focus on ms. carmody being a prophet, i guess.

actually what did piss me off about the ending though was seeing that one lady who walked out of the store at the beginning of the movie. what the fuck? how the fuck did she survive? fuck that shit man! like, what the hell was the point of that other than WOAH DUDE SHE SURVIVED... DONT YOU LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE NOW HUH DRAYTON"

steel replied basically saying "but fuck the fact that ms. carmody was right" and i kind of agreed with that at first but then i tried to look at it in a different way:

"oh yeah i know was going to go into how the religious context was complete bullshit if you read it that way but it was 4 in the morning so i didn't really feel like getting into it.

that said i still feel like it was more of a criticism than anything else. carmody is still made out to be a monster and her followers seem more like followers of a cult than genuinely religious people. and, i mean, the part where what's his face kills her is seriously the best part of the movie and was obviously done in a way to make us think OH THANK GOD SHE WAS SUCH A BITCH (of course the way she's laid out on the ground when she's killed is obviously meant to resemble the cross, but i take it more as FAKE RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM as opposed to LOOK SHE'S LIKE JESUS... almost like she was laid out like that more because SHE thought she was holy than because actually was).

you have to consider that drayton was the one who killed his son and not carmody or her followers. had carmody herself killed him and the mist faded then yeah that would be complete bullshit and i would completely write off the movie just because of that. but that's not what happened; drayton had to kill his own son in order for the mist to clear. and that, to me, seems like more of a criticism than an affirmation of YES SACRIFICE IS GOOD.

basically, yeah, in THE MOVIE WORLD ms. carmody was right about everything, but i think what that's saying is that people in real life who are like ms. carmody (or similar at least) are fucknuts and IS THIS SERIOUSLY WHAT YOU ASSHOLES WANT or something like that.

i don't know, i guess this is kind of a loose reading, but i really don't think that after all that build up of hatred for ms. carmody that the movie would end with HEH TURNS OUT SHE WAS RIGHT REPENT REPENT REPENT. i think a lot of people might read it that way which is too bad because i don't think that's what it's trying to say!"

then:

"i guess to put it in a slightly clearer way, it's saying that if this is what you believe in (WE MUST REPENT etc), then you're a fucking asshole because look at what happens to good people like drayton. it presents the belief as if it were true and shows you why it's gay as hell and stupid.

i think if darabont had ended it the way stephen king did (i shouldn't be doing this because i haven't read the book and i'm just going off what you said), then misinterpretation wouldn't be a problem, but i think he was trying to criticize religious radicals in a different way.

or maybe he just really fucked up the ending i don't know."

i didn't bother reading this again so there are probably some things i could change and it's probably kind of a stretch but yeah that's what i got from it i guess

I still totally disagree with Roman's perspective.

I just really don't like the implication that Carmody is right. let's not forget the woman who wanders off at the beginning but is alive for some stupid reason. it doesn't sit well with me at all!

I saw this movie about a month ago. It's a great movie imo, but the ending was a bit duff. I was suprised that it was a movie by Frank Darabont in a way, but in an other way not becuase its a steven king book.

Also, I don't agree with Roman that Carmody was a real prophet. I think it was an example of when in extreme peril that they dont understand, people will latch onto any crazy idea and will twist their logic and reason. All of Carmody's predictions could be put down to coincidence and I think the purpose of her character was to show how the general public will easily follow a leader no matter how ridiculous it sounds

end of the novell-ette
Basically, the group (minus the old man) heads off in the scout the same way they did in the movie.

Cut to some period of time later, Drayton is speaking directly to the reader through a journal/letter. They are in the lobby of some building, everyone is sleeping except Drayton, who is writing the journal/letter, to whomever may find it. He basically says he has no plan of action but to attempt to drive to Hartford (he has like 15 hours of gas left?), because while randomly flipping through AM radio channels, he only hears one word: Hartford.

this is a little bit of a simplification. it's a pretty hopeless ending but there's that last bit and you are left wondering. as opposed to this one HEH KILL A BABBY I BET YOUR WIFE'S STILL ALIVE TOO.

oh and IDK how big that was in the movie but in the book he tries to get to his wife and then has to admit to himself that she's dead.

oh whaaat.

that's not as sad

it's much worse when he's not even close to there and there's a tree in the way and he's thinking I CAN MOVE THE TREE I CAN MOVE IT REALLY QUICK and then Amanda puts her hand on him and he just breaks down.

Roman I'm surprised you thought that woman was (even in the movie world) a real prophet. She was just a scared religious zealot who then, in her eyes, had her faith affirmed by one of the insects not killing her (she stood still and waited for it to get the fuck off her when everyone else was going nuts). At one point you can hear her preaching about Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son to God which I thought was some of her reasoning behind that rather than the first-born plague thing.

I thought the mist clearing was a result of the army breezing through killing all the other-world shit rather than an effect of Drayton killing his son.

But yeah, I am a very big fan of sad endings and this really delivered. It really couldn't possibly be worse for Drayton at the end. He had to kill his son out of mercy and having promised him to never let the monsters get him but even so that is so awful and sad

Yeah I thought that was what was going to happen, he'd shoot them all and then walk off into the mist to kill himself, end of film. But then the mist clearing and everything being A-OKAY is just so so much worse for him. If he'd just walked off into the mist he's spared his kid being ripped apart and kept his promise and is a hero because he's the one who couldn't take the easy way out but as it happened it was just a massive tragic waste (unless you think the boy's life is tied up with the mist itself which I don't get)

I'd have totally been disappointed with either walk off into mist ending or the novella ending as I understand it.

Man I dug this movie. With so much absolute shit being passed off in the horror/sci fi/POST APOCALYPSE genre today, it was so nice seeing one as genuinely despressing and hopeless and eerie as this!

ps......cant wait to see prom night

Roman I'm surprised you thought that woman was (even in the movie world) a real prophet. She was just a scared religious zealot who then, in her eyes, had her faith affirmed by one of the insects not killing her (she stood still and waited for it to get the fuck off her when everyone else was going nuts). At one point you can hear her preaching about Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son to God which I thought was some of her reasoning behind that rather than the first-born plague thing.

I thought the mist clearing was a result of the army breezing through killing all the other-world shit rather than an effect of Drayton killing his son.

But yeah, I am a very big fan of sad endings and this really delivered. It really couldn't possibly be worse for Drayton at the end. He had to kill his son out of mercy and having promised him to never let the monsters get him but even so that is so awful and sad

I want to give Frank Darabont the benefit of the doubt, because if nothing else he's a pretty good director in terms of making things look nice and evoking emotions and shit.  Honestly, though, he doesn't really seem like an IDEA person to me.  Three of his four major movies have been based on Stephen King books, so I kind of get the feeling that he's more about just putting a book on the big screen and not about injecting his own ideas and interpretations into it (unlike, say, Stanley Kubrick, who's movies are all based on books but they are still HIS MOVIES as opposed to the author's book as a movie, if that makes any sense).  So quite frankly I probably am "wrong" about this movie in the sense that Darabont probably didn't have this in mind when he was making it.

That said, I'm the type of person who thinks that there's no such thing as an incorrect interpretation of a movie (unless the interpretation is absolutely ridiculous like saying a movie where a dude gets his hair cut is about SEXUAL DOMINANCE hey guy maybe andy warhol's just a boring douche).  Quite frankly I think directors should be more like David Lynch (isn't it funny how I manage to bring him up in every topic ever) or Stanley Kubrick who usually refuse to reveal their intentions with their movies and instead let them speak for themselves.  I remember reading about American Psycho the other day and the director said something like "a lot of people think the murders were just in Patrick's mind but they all actually happened" which I think is mad gay because she was basically saying NOPE SORRY YOUR INTERPRETATION WAS WRONG and fuck that because the idea that the murders were in his head was much more interesting anyway.   

edit: yeah i know i said STEEL YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT THE MIST'S ENDING but when i say "there's no such thing as an incorrect interpretation of a movie" i really mean "shut up i'm right about everything"