The Mist: Post Release (spoilers) - Page 11

It makes me want to shoot myself in the head. But I ran out of bullets.

There's no denying that fate (or whatever) fucked him. The difference between Jane and the woman is that she made the step of walking right out into the terrifying unknown, and found that there was hope out there after all. Whereas he was so beaten down by the horrors he'd endured in recent times (insert political allegory here) that he couldn't make that step, and his group paid the price for defeatism in the worst possible way.

But like I said in my earlier post he walked right out into the great unknown as well. If his kid were out there he would of done that. But his kid as inside and he knew his boy needed him alive. And don't froget that Biker who left and got killed. He gathered supplies and journeyed out into the Mist as well. He went out with the plan of HOPING that he could outrun the Mist. They both had plenty of hope. The difference is she just happened to run into the military before he did. Had she not run into the military when she did she probably would have done the same thing. You have to remember that he shot his son out of love. She wasn't in a situation as hopeless as his. It was all purely chance. Look all im saying is if your going to make your film a message to never lose hope thats fine. But using the woman as your "hope figure" really doesn't work.

Look im fine with the "oh if he had only waited" moment just like im fine with the "ohh don't look out the window, oh shit! why didn't he yell out or something?" moment in Night Of The Living Dead. But thats all it is, a depressing ending. If anything it just shows how no matter what decision you make you might get fucked, how random things are. But however you want to look at it, great fucking movie.

It may be a matter of nuance, but I'd say the movie's less about keeping vs. losing hope, than about overcoming vs. succumbing to fear. If you see the mist itself as one big overwhelming metaphor for Fear, the theme's consistent throughout.

The message of the movie isn't that hope will make everything all better all the time. It's that without it, things only get worse and worse. That's not denying randomness, but the lady makes it, and that says something significant. Sure, she was lucky to get through, and the biker and the Shermanator got eaten even though they never gave up. Hope doesn't guarantee salvation, but it allows for the possibility, even if its a long shot.

Perfect allegory sucks balls, anyway.

Excellent post. I was stumbling to make the same point by saying that effective allegory is not an algebraic equation. It has to be logically consistent to make sense, but slavish devotion to it robs the viewer of coming to his interpretation on his own.

The woman confronted the mist with a different attitude to the biker and the Sherminator, They were sort of like fuck this Mist, she was more like yeah the mist is terrifying but my kids are far more important than my fear.

As to the Bullets vs finding another car or whatever, His Son made him promise he wouldn't let the monsters get him. In the supermarket if they stayed the cult of monsters would have got him so he had to get him out of there, in the car there was no way he could have felt any kind of certainty that he could have protected him while they looked for a new car. Earlier on his son almost got killed by a 4 foot bird thing, they just saw a tentacled skyscraper walk by.

No what im saying is that the woman only walked into the Mist because her kids were on the other side. Jane's kid wasn't on the other side, he was there with him. Look both characters only did what the did to protect their kids. She walked into the Mist, found her kid and at some point stumbled into the military. That was the best thing for her kids in that situation. Jane did what he thought was best for his child as well. And in the end that included shooting his kid in the face so the monsters wouldn't get him. What im trying to stress is that if the situation was exactly the same the woman would have done it too. However that situation never arose for her. To me she didn't have anymore hope than Jane did, her situation was just very different.

See I would buy that the movie was about that lose of hope if it just ended with Jane killing his son and then the tanks pull up. Then it would have made perfect sense. The problem is that they include the shot of the woman with her kids. Obviously your supposed to conclude that she lived because she didn't lose hope but how can you know that? I have no idea what her journey through the Mist was like. I don't know when and where she ran into the military. If she was put in Jane's situation would she have pulled the trigger? Possibly, because she loved her kids that much, to speare them the pain.

I loved that movie and I know that was the point the director was trying to make I just don't think using the woman as your hope figure was a good way to drive it home. If that shot of her were cut however I would be right on board with you guys. But as I have said regardless of my point of view the film was fucking great and it's at least cool that it's sparking this kind of debate.

According to the commentary she wasn't on the truck in the script, they just added her to the scene because they liked the actress, It's also possible she wasn't there to represent hope but rather an oh by the way if you'd left when I did you might have been able to save your wife too, enjoy the dead family, sucker.

I'm not sure how this leads to this

They're situations were different, and so they reacted differently, leading to different results. I'm not saying the lady should be some kind of role model for Jane or that they all should've gone charging into the mist right off the bat. He went through a lot more than she did (one imagines) before he lost hope. But he did, and in this story that means worst happens.

Originally Posted By:horrid
Actually that pretty much solves my problem, thank you. You see that was the promblem I was having. I have no problem with the way the film ended, I don't mind a depressing ending. My problem wasn't even the message, it was the way the message was carried out. They tried to draw a mini parallel between Jane and the woman. However having this new information it actually cahnges my opinion. As I said in my earlier post my problem was always with the shot of the woman. I really just wish they had left her out.

Finally saw this last night. Quick cut to the chase: the ending DESTROYED me. Three holy shit moments in a row before the end credits. But, being a dad myself, Drayton making good on his promise to his kid did me in. Welcome to the land of BLEAK. I'm just spewing some initial randomness here and may have something of more substance to add later. But I probably need to let this one sink in for a while. Very good flick, though, and very different from what I was expecting out of Darabont. He's just a master at conveying true horror and dread. What is this - only the fourth film he's directed? I hope he does a lot more of it in the coming years - but not at the expense of that little writing gig he's got going.

As much as the general public seems either angry or apathetic towards the movie, I like to think it will age well. Ten years later, it'll be the new THE THING.

The new "The Thing" sums it up nicely for me - and considering thats my favourite horror flick ever Im guessing y'all can imagine my reaction to this after finally catching it this afternoon. Thought Id be fair and read this thread before commenting, but Im sorry the last few pages of geek-nitpicking fucking retardation broke my brain.

This was an allegorical masterwork from Darabont, and considering my own worldview and view of our species is pretty fucking misanthropic and hopeless, it rang some pretty major bells for me. Watching people tear themselves apart through fear resonated incredibly deeply with me as I've watched my idealism get shat upon by world events over the last 7 years. Darabont is obviously ne angry mo-fo and I share his anger every step.

The ending was the best emotionally negative sucker punch I'd recieved since the ending to Seven and I think this will easily end up being heralded as a classic in a decade as a consequence.

I didn't think there was a bum performance in the film and for those wanting to argue "I never would have shot my son", well, my old man loved his kids more than anything else in his existence, and I can almost guarantee you that had he been in the same situation I'd have copped a bullet in the head to replace the possible death by inter-dimensional-creature dismemberment that had lain in my future otherwise.

I made sure to not know anything about this outside of what I'd seen in the originally theatrical trailer so its good to see that my scream of "FUCK YEAH" when Harden gets it was echoed in many cinemas and with many viewers. A wonderful reminder of why I have no interest in organised religion.

All in all, this for me has been Darabonts best work to date - and yep, sacrilege tho it may be around here, I count Shawshank in that assessment as well.

A brilliant, pertinent poigniant horror film that remidns me what the best of the genre can offer.

Fantastic.

Just saw this via Netflix, and all I can say is WOW.

This is one of those movies that restores one's faith in the medium - and especially in the horror genre, which I had all but given up on in the past few years.

Someone earlier in this thread mentioned that this is what the "DOOM" movie should have been. That made me laugh, but there's no denying that this movie nails the feeling of having the gates of hell open up and swallowing civilization. I can't remember ANY movie provoking such suspense, terror, and utter hopelessness.

What surprised me the most is how well the movie sold the transition of the shoppers from scared yet rational people into a murderous, crazed mob. The look on that mechanic's face after he "turned" was truly frightening.

I'd love to get into the more allegorical stuff in this movie, but I don't feel I can expound on that without one or two more viewings. I need to order the 2-disc DVD with the Black & White version of the movie ASAP.

I watched the black & white version tonight, thanks to the recent horror draft. Masterful riff on the "siege" subgenre of horror. Have never seen the color version, but the b&w is a great bit of Lovecraft by way of Romero.

The movie ended about 20 minutes ago. My wife just stopped crying.

One of the best horror movies ever.

I don't think it's one of the best horror films made but what i find refreshing about "The Mist" is that it comes across as a horror film for adults,it involves "characters" instead of stereotyped pieces of meat and the tension is built steadily.Really its greatest strength is that its a psychological horror that brings up moral questions that linger long after the film,thats scary.
(plus that giant monster near the end was jaw-dropping)

I wish films like this were made more often,i love the horror genre but theres so much shit being released that i've sorta given up on it.

I thought the characters were just a lil stereotyped - the good old boys and their "you think you better than us cuz you went to college" thing was a bit broad. And Mrs. Carmody wrangled her congregation a bit quickly, it seemed - I'll have to watch it again, but it seemed just this side of organic. But these things didn't detract.

And again, I'm curious to see it in color now, but in B&W the cgi wasn't that jarring, even at its most fake.

I didn't find the characters motives too predictable.I thought the "the good ole boys" mentality came across ok as its all brought up through fear,prejudices are voiced throughout the film and you see it in the real world fairly regularly when people are cornered and the same with Carbody's gathering,its all mob-mentality and people have been known to suddenly turn religious when they're life is threatened.
I even felt sorry for Mrs Carmody at times even though i wanted to wring her neck.

(i'm envious of anyone that has seen the B&W version)

Stephen King tends to bring up class division and Religious devoutism a lot in his novels,it's something that obviously plays on his mind or interests him.I'm reading "The Stand" at the moment which is full of it.

I like this movie, but that's about as far as I'd go. Sadly, I haven't seen the black & white version, and I definitely look forward to doing so one day. Honestly, though, even in the color version, I thought the atmosphere was very good. I'm sure the b&w version will do an ever better job of creating one. My problems with the film were more character-based. Phil brings up some great points.

It's obviously many steps ahead of what Hollywood usually gives us. I'd much rather recommend this one than the crap out there. Even if the characters aren't near perfect, I'm just glad they tried to give us ones that were layered.

Man, I hated that ending, and not because I didn't buy it. I bought it fine.

What did I just sit through all of that for? For a sick bit of irony? The ending wasn't bad ass. It wasn't profound. It was cruel, and if you're going to be cruel, I want you to be cruel for a reason. I want it to be in the service of some universal truth. This was in the service of a gotcha ending that didn't say anything about anything.

I much prefer the ending of the book which was more open ended, but felt like an honest ending in a way the film's did not.

"Where there is life, there is hope" not universal enough for ya?

The ending was about losing hope. It sucks that you just saw it as a gotcha ending.

The ending doesn't play at all to the themes present in the rest of the film, which are more about the shittier aspects of human nature. It's a shocker finale, and I happen to like it, but it's not really of a piece with the rest, as it's not an ending that ties stuff together in some amazing thematic way, like Spoorloos, for example. It kind of transmutes the film's message from being about how shitty people get in a crisis into a more general cynicism about life, fate, and chance. I enjoy it's audacity a ton, but it's not a perfect ending (nor is King's really).

But the rest of the movie just gets better and better. What it really seems up to, to me, is assaulting American institutions of faith. Government, community, and religion all fail, and fast, as soon as shit goes bad, and people's beliefs run wild. It slams ideologies on the left and the right, with Andre Braugher's judge typifying arrogant leftism and godlessness (he's a east coast liberal elitist, and probably a big Richard Dawkins fan), and William Sadler's redneck puts me in mind of the videos I've seen of McCain rallies, as a completely uninformed, yet narcissistic simpleton, eager to put his faith in whatever is easiest and most personally flattering. Viewed through this lens, the bigger jumps those characters make seem less untrue, and more like heightened stylistic choices. In it's way, it's got as much to say about the culture wars as anything that's been made on the subject. I wish the ending hit this stuff directly, but I can't think of a change that would have, so I'll take the fuck you ending we got over the uncertain future in King.

There is an argument to be made (that I guess I'm kinda making it) that the people in the market went all Lord Of The Flies when they began accepting the apocalyptic nature of the situation, as presented by the religious zealot. By accepting her view that this was the end and a irrecoverable punishment from God, they acquiesced to the lower, more cowardly and hopeless parts of their nature. With this train of though, it is the opposite of difficult to see the ending as perfectly in line with the themes the film set up.

I personally believe the entire movie, especially the supermarket portion, is that hope is the most important thing separating us from our more primal nature. It's what keeps us alive and human.

Explain to me how "If they'd just not shot each other in the head for like 2 more minutes, they would have been safe!" is not a gotcha ending?

If they had lived and the army had found them it would still be an ending about not losing hope. The book's ending, while not particularly filmable was also about hope and not nearly as much of a "You cared about these guys? Well fuck you!" middle finger to the audience.

As to Andre Braugher -- I love the guy, superb actor, but his part was a mess. He acted completely irrationally and didn't feel like a real guy so much as a plot point. That character worked a bit better in the book.

There's a difference between a Gotcha! ending and one the plays up the sad irony for the impact. There was still a point behind it.

I wouldn't assume you have shot a couple of friends and your child in the head just a moment before the Apocalypse reversed itself, but have you never felt a (relatively) similar feeling of "oh shit, I really wish I had waited to do that!" ...? It's a real feeling, that was heightened to an extreme (albeit circumstantially choreographed) level to service the theme.

They're definately lower and more cowardly, but not hopeless. They hope God will save them. They're going to kill the boy because they want to appease God's wrath, not because they've given up. Unless you're saying they've given up hope in the American military, because that's accurate, but I don't think that's the message. I honestly think the hope thing is loud and clear at the end and not really present through the rest of the movie. It's a cool dark ending and it ties in neatly with Shawshank, whatever, but it's not what The Mist is about, as a whole. If that keeps it from being some sort of Chinatown-calibre model of precision filmmaking, fine, but it's still a terrific and fascinating movie, with maybe too many ideas for a completely coherent central thesis statement.

You know what would've been better? If he had shot them in the head, and then, to avoid seeming like a gotcha ending, the movie had five more scenes of Thomas Jane driving down the road before the apocalypse ended.

OR.... he could have just not shot them in the head. But that wouldn't be snarky enough to serve the purpose of your post.

And in doing so leave the audience with a point in complete opposition to the one he's trying to get across. You're right, that works much better.

They had been through so much agony in the store and on the parking lot. Throughout the movie they were portrayed as survivor types willing to do anything to survive, even venture out on a parking lot filled with monsters. Yet when they run out of gas they simply give up???

You might buy that but I didn't, not for a second. They had plenty of alternatives yet Darabont had a weak moment and decided to shock the audience and have Jane kill his child.

Despite this very lame ending I still have plenty of love for this film!

Reading The Mist as a purely political allegory, it seems to me that Darabont isn't only mad at conservatives. He's just, or maybe even more so, mad at liberals for giving up. Hence the extra FUCK YOU of the ending. It's not so much that the movie says 'There's always hope'. It seems more like 'Fuck you fundies for messing everything up and fuck you liberals for letting them.'

Indeed.

Shit if it was me, I would have probably ran out of the pharmacy at the first sign of one of those spiders and beaten myself to death with a hammer.

Then again, my wife has to talk me out of putting cyanide in our breakfast every time I see a daddy long legs on our balcony.

Fucking spiders.

Tell that to this guy:

Is that Spiderman?

Regarding Mrs. Carmody, I've often seen it brought up that her "conversion" of the people inside the store seems rushed or inorganic. I have to say, I disagree with that sentiment. For the people who rush to her side, the mist and the monsters represent the literal embodiment of what she's been trumpeting all along (well before the day depicted in the film). They're terrified, and they think Carmody, who now looks to be a prophet, knows the way out. The attack scenes have a great visceral quality about them, but I think one thing Darabont wanted to do with them was lend credence to what was going on with the people inside the store. Without that kind of brutal immediacy, yeah, I think such conversion would feel rushed and perhaps even unnecessary. (That Carmody is really only serving her own messiah complex is a nice little ancillary fuck you.) But Darabont wants to evoke (and succeeds in evoking) that end-of-the-world hopelessness which would push people to the limits of rational thought, which not only lends ballast to the Carmody dealings but ties into the major theme about keeping hope alive despite all signs of its death. The ending is really the final punctuation. Not only what Jane does, but remember the shot of the woman in the army truck who left the store earlier in the film to find her kids. She's the answer to the question that Jane's actions are asking.

This is a perfect summation.

The reason I like this film so much is that the characters do not realize they are in a horror movie. I agree there is some oversimplified characterization in parts, but these are honest, visceral reactions to something completely outside the characters' grasp. We've seen gore and tentacles and creepy spiders onscreen before, but Darabont's emphasis on the drama of the situation rather than the horror gives the setup a new life. (I've often thought it could be effectively worked into a killer stage production with the monsters only alluded to offstage.) The characters' reactions aren't determined by what will move the plot forward. The character's reactions are the plot. There's no self-consciousness or even the slightest hint of fourth-wall winking. Extreme circumstances elicit extreme reactions, and fear causes the worst of all. I didn't doubt the mass conversion to Carmody for a second.

When I first saw The Mist in theaters, I hated the ending. HATED it. Not because I felt it was a cheap shock ending, but because I have always felt that the ending to the original novella is one of the greatest endings in all of horror. Ever. It's dark for sure, but it also leaves a glimmer of hope. It's a classic, Hemingway-esque open ending: YOU decide what happens. The mixture of hope and horror has always struck me as the right way to handle things.

I recently bought the DVD for Halloween and watching it again, I've grown more used to the ending now that I know it's coming. It still bugs me...it's a borderline perfect adaptation up until the last sixty seconds and up to that point, it's easily my favorite horror film of the '00s.

It's just that...well, here comes my disgusting inner fanboy...you don't fix what isn't broken. All of the changes Darabont made to the story until the ending were great. You have bend and mold a source before you can adapt it to a film. I don't want to call the ending a cop-out, because it's not. It's a brave ending with massive balls. I admire that. I appreciate that. And I'm not going to join the camp that argues "They could have just stayed in the car for two more minutes." That's bullshit. I would have done the exact same thing. I just think it lives in the shadow of a more powerful, if less flashy, ending.

And after a re-watch, I not longer HATE the ending, but I still think it's the wrong way to end the film. All of my friends who didn't read the novella loved the ending, so I know it's just me. Normally if a movie is an adaptation of something I love, I can separate myself from the source and judge it on it's own merits. For some reason, I just can't find myself doing that here.

Anyway, that's probably just a bunch of useless rambling. I really came here to say that the movie really works a lot better in black and white, so lay down the big bucks for the two-disk edition. That's all.

I agree with this statement, I think the movie has a lot of "going towards something" vs "running away from something" (which could be labeled hope vs fear, but I think that those words are too easy to be connected only with the current political rethoric, while I think the movie's point goes beyond that). I think in a way, the point is that Carmody's congregation is reacting only out of fear, away from the problem at hand, but Thomas Jane's character and co. do the same. They were never running away towards somewhere, they were just running away and with no clear destination, with no "hope", there was no other way for them to end.

I don't think it's just one point of irony, I think it's the very point that the movie was working towards and I would wager that probably that was Darabont's intention in adapting the story all along. The irony isn't so much the whole "if only he had waited 2 minutes", but the way to deliver the point, to not let it ambiguous, as if just by going away from the store, they might or not make it, but making a larger point, not present in King's, that it's necessary to go towards something.

And if everyone is bent on interpreting this movie exclusively politically, then I could make the case that the movie's point is sort of like Kerry's campaign, entirely predicated on leaving Bush behind while not looking forward to anything different, making it fitting that he lost since he was pretty much running with the same "filter" that Bush had run, just with a different "audience", while, at least rethorically, Obama's campaign was towards something larger, not only leaving the mist behind, but keeping in mind what to find when it clears.

Bumping  this Thread.

 

Watched  this weekend for the first time. Thankfully I avoided all spoiler discussion and I'm so glad I did because of that incredible ending which I'm so glad the filmmakers had the guts to keep in rather than give in to some execs in suits who probabaly tried to force them to re-shoot. Though my eyes prevented me from reading through all 11 pages of this thread, I did read through many posts and the overall feeling that 'Hope' is the underlining message is, I agree, spot on. Jane's decision to kill everyone and then let himself get eaten by some otherworldy creatures was the right choice. The ending is ultimately a Shakesperian trajedy that we don't see that often in today's Hollywood. Bravo to everyone involved. I'm sorry this film wasn't more of a hit at the box office.

 

I also think that the ending in many ways, makes any unanswered questions one might have irrelevant. For example: I would have liked to have gotten a more concrete answer as to exactly how the creatures came to be. Did the previous night's storm have any implication or was it strictly the military fucking with science that cause an interdimesional/ prehistoric 'wormhole'? When Jane and Braugher are driving to the store and they see the military racing away in the opposite direction were they fleeing the scene or driving somewhere to prevent someother accident? And what became of Braugher's character and the few that chose to leave with him??

 

Again, these questions, because of that incredible heartbraking ending make them ultimately inconsequential.

 

 

Darabont was offered a higher budget for a happier ending. I'm glad he stuck to his guns.

 

Interesting, I did not know that.  Glad he did as well.

 

OMG that WAS the Sherminator!  I just caught that.  

The B&W version of this film really pops on Blu.

 

It's odd watching The Walking Dead after seeing this. The same actors are playing essentially the same characters, yet they feel more fully realized in a two-hour film then they do on the series so far.

 

My biggest quibble with the movie: When Thomas Jane attempts to cry at the end of the movie. He just can't pull it off.

It felt to me like he was trying to do a Brad Pitt impression.  You know how Brad is always making that scrunched up hafta-poop face when he gets angry/sad/confused?  It's usually accompanied with screaming.  The best was in Seven with "Oh GAWD!!!!" over and over.  Jane should have thrown one of those in.