Rant: Why ‘The Mist’ Will Be Watched For Decades

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‘The Mist’ was a horror film released in 2007 and was based on the Stephen King novella of the same name. It starred Thomas Jane and Laurie Holden and was written and directed by Frank Darabont, who holds The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption to his credit, both as a writer and a director. The basic premise of this film is a thick mist billows over a small town trapping much of the townspeople in the local supermarket. Inside the mist, however, are horrifying creatures from an alternate universe bent on killing whatever human is in sight.

Now the film did fairly well at the box office, and like the Stephen King novella it was based on was more about what happens to normal citizens trying to survive. Had it not been written by Frank Darabont, The Mist would have been easily written off as another clichéd horror film, en par with something like John Carpenter’s The Thing (not to say that The Thing wasn’t awesome in its own right).

However, that’s not what makes this film so good.

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD!

By the end of the film (read at your own risk!) our main character, David, is hunkered in a car with Dan, Amanda, Irene, and Billy as the car slowly runs out of gas on the interstate highway. They have a gun, however, there are only four bullets in the chamber, and rather than being willing victims of a more violent death at the hands of these chambers, David wipes out everyone in the car in a five-second span. After leaving the car, David, expecting death, finds a convoy of military vehicles coming up the road, with everyone that survived back at the supermarket in tow, and the mist slowly recedes into nothingness.

Now while this may go into history as one of the most depressing movie endings ever, this isn’t why it will be watched for decades.

The reason it will stand the test of time is because the original ending was completely different. In this alternate ending they have five bullets in the gun’s chamber and just as David is about to pull the trigger they get a signal on the radio telling them that help is on the way, leaving everyone to survive.

This is one of the few instances in modern cinema where I’ve heard of a happier ending being swapped for a more depressing ending. This is why this film is so memorable. Would it have done better with the clichéd happier ending? A guaranteed no! ‘The Mist’ will stand for decades, not only as one of Stephen King’s most faithful adaptations, but also for defying the norms of the ‘horror genre’ in this manner. A change that won’t soon be forgotten, at least by this blogger.