The Mist

[andrewducker]

Thanks to the urging, and donation of AVI files, I just watched The Mist.

Which was pretty good, well made, tense and gripping.

And I hated the end.

If it had finished 30 seconds earlier.

Or a minute and a half earlier.

Or about four minutes earlier.

Any of those would be fine.

But the ending went from "Bleak and sad" to "Let's just fuck with the characters for no good reason", which pissed me off. It felt far too much like the writer snickering "Ha! This'll fuck with them!" and I hate blatant negative emotional manipulation just as much as I hate the positie kind.

Still worth seeing - I'm just annoyed.

Comments

Alternate endings (spoilers, obviously)

[andrewducker]

I'd have been fine with "they drive off into the mist" or "he shoots them all and is left sitting in the car by himself" or "he gets out and runs screaming into the mist to his unknown fate". All of them would have flowed naturally from what went before.

But "he shoots the only people he cares about, thirty seconds before they would have been rescued" is just a coincidence too far to work for me.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is very very horrible.

I'd have prefered some kind of reference to how long they'd been driving for or the distance they'd travelled and more of a gap between what happened and encountering the truck, but I can forgive it for an absolutely gut-wrenching last few minutes. Yes, it's unfair and treats them all horribly, but what a brave way to end it.

Stephen King liked it, btw:

"Darabont conceived of a new ending in translating the novella for the big screen. Author Stephen King praised Darabont's new ending, describing it as one that would be unsettling for studios. King said, 'The ending is such a jolt—wham! It's frightening. But people who go to see a horror movie don't necessarily want to be sent out with a Pollyanna ending.'"

[andrewducker]

Also - am I the only one to have imagined that Gordon Freeman was involved somewhere?

[blackmanxy.livejournal.com]

I just watched this last night and came to pretty much the same conclusions you did, from hating the "fuck you" ending to saying at least a couple times, "so, this is Half-Life then." But I still really enjoyed it. My favorite part was finally seeing where the tentacles were coming from. I love mega-megafauna.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

Shaggy dog stories suck.

[blackmanxy.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about that, and I agree with Andrew's first comment in this thread. Even a straight TPK would have been better than what we got. Honestly, it was like the worst Outer Limits ending ever.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

IIRC, the original ends on a 'we don't know what's out there, but we're going to keep going' point, a sort of journey off into the unknown, into a world made more dangerous because of the mist. I'm thinking that would've made for a better ending.

[andrewducker]

I'd agree - although bits of the new ending worked really well. Just not the very end of it.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I actually didn't like the movie at all. There were way too many problems that could have been avoided if they weren't so darned stupid. Like - you know there are a lot of scary creatures out there, so when you go to get much needed supplies from another store, you grab them and get out - you don't go to investigate the weird noises in the corner. Blah.