The disturbing theory behind the ending of Stephen King horror ‘The Mist’
A good movie ending will stick with you forever. Just look at how Francis Ford Coppola left his American masterpiece, The Godfather, with Al Pacino glancing back to a closing door, or how Christopher Nolan kept us thinking after Leonardo DiCaprio spun his totem at the end of Inception. Still, nothing quite jams itself into our mind more than a shocking twist, with the Stephen King tale The Mist from 2007 providing this with an added gut-punch.
Helmed by Frank Darabont, who also directed adaptations of King’s Shawshank Redemption and Green Mile, The Mist tells the story of a small American town which becomes engulfed by thick smog hiding Lovecraftian creatures. Seeking shelter in a supermarket, David (Thomas Jane), his son Billy (Nathan Gamble) and fellow citizens of their town attempt to fight for survival whilst avoiding infighting from person to person.
Such is made worse when Marcia Gay Harden’s Mrs. Carmody begins to spout religious theories as to the existential nightmare, suggesting that the beasts need human sacrifices in order for normal order to resume. Fleeing Carmody and the wider group, David, Billy and their newfound friends, Amanda (Laurie Holden), Dan (Jeffrey DeMunn), and Irene (Frances Sternhagen), drive through the mist, hoping to reach clean air.
It all leads to a tragic finale, with the group running out of fuel whilst still in the smog. Instead of succumbing to the pain and torment of death at the hands of the monsters, the group agree to commit suicide, despite there only being four bullets in their gun and five bodies in the car.
Eventually, having killed everyone else in the car in one of cinema’s most brutal death scenes, David is the only one left, exiting the car to meet his maker at the hands of the monsters. Tragically, however, the mist parts and an army walks through, clearing the path of mist and rescuing everybody they see in their path.
Whilst the ending is one of the toughest to take in all of cinema history, what makes matters worse is the theory that Mrs. Carmody might have been right all along.
You see, Carmody suggests that Billy and Amanda should be offered up as tributes to the monsters earlier in the film, an act of desperation in order to appease her God. But, even though she was unsuccessful in her plans, with David killing her before escaping, once Billy and Amanda were killed, the mists did indeed dissipate. Was the cosmic event an act of God after all?
Though the theory is undoubtedly disturbing, it does somewhat fit in with Stephen King’s thematic obsessions with mortal horror and nihilism.
Speaking about the ending of the movie, King stated in an interview with Yahoo, “When Frank [Darabont] said that he wanted to do the ending that he was going to do, I was totally down with that. I thought that was terrific. And it was so anti-Hollywood — anti-everything, really! It was nihilistic. I liked that. So I said you go ahead and do it.”
