I loved it! I wasn’t expecting that ending, though. I think they should have stuck to the original ending.
But the monsters!!! They were very good, and the little spiders made me pick up my feet off the floor and squeal like a little girl…
I give it a 9 out of 10. Yay!
Only joking - I’m referring strictly to the title, as pinkfreud said. I’m pretty sure it’s actually a wink at TSMD fans, King does that sort of thing now and then, it seems.
I guess I should have smileyd
I’m in. I’ve got a Steadicam and a camera. We need a battery operated golf cart and a long lonely road with rises and falls.
And a great set of actors. 
Cartooniverse, who ADORES King and his short works.
Since everyone else seems to have given up on spoiler boxes, I’ll dispense with them, too.
Well, we saw it last night. I’d have preferred the more ambiguous kind of ending that was in the story. But at least they didn’t tack a Hollywood-happy ending on. I would have really hated that! I will say that if I were David, knew my wife had been gotten by the spiders, had just shot my 5-year-old son, then the Army comes, well, I’d probably still kill myself! I mean, how do you live with something like that? To me, that was the scariest part of the movie. Psychologically terrifying. Of course, that kind of stuff is scarier when you have kids.
As for the religious lunatic, well, there really are lunatics like that out there. And the question of whether she’d actually get people in her camp after just two days, well, for one thing, I’m going to go out on a limb and say two days is a long time in that sort of situation. And when everything else seems hopeless, some people (more than we’d like to believe) will reach for any hope that’s offered them. And down in the front of the theater we were in, there was a cheering section of teenagers that I could have sworn were going to start choreographed cheers when that bitch got shot! (Not that she didn’t need killin’).
Like Dolores Reborn, the scene in the pharmacy had me screaming like a little girl. The bugs on the window glass were bad, the flying things and tentacled things were bad, but the spiders. . .::shudder::
So in the movie, is The Mist just a localized problem? I always felt that it was a story that could have had a sequal from King. Heh, if the spoilers are right, maybe someone will and they’ll say him offing his kid was “just a dream” :p, and I’ll actually support it.
Is the giant, giant, GIANT monster in it?
The ending was not compatible with the source story.
The story had balance - it was as much about Drayton’s People not losing it, and keeping their shit together, as it was about Brent’s People and Carmodie’s People losing it.
The story had ambiguity - King kept the Mist at a distance and didn’t give any definitive answers about the Mist, about the fate of Drayton’s People, about his wife’s denouement. The story was written for grownups who didn’t need every god-damned thing shown to them, or finished for them.
And the last word in the story? Hope. In the end, Drayton’s people kept their shit together, stayed human, and had a chance to survive. The story wasn’t a hopeless exercise in rendering a Lord of the Flies in the Grocery Store with Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
The stupid, easy, trite, cliched, retarded movie ending is an insult to the source story, and to the audience’s intelligence. The “fluff” that was redacted from the movie was an important balance in the source story, and the ambiguity and unresolved events was a key aspect to the source story. The movie took the stupid path and dispensed with what made the story work. It did keep the monsters, and we have the lowest common denominator approach to adapting a source story to movie form. The movie people thought the audience too stupid or otherwise inclined to handle an ambiguous ending.
No, we can’t leave the fate of Mrs Drayton unknown, no, we can’t the entire scope of the Mist remain unknown, and no, we can’t leave the Drayton People out there with an unknown fate (but, as in the book, a fighting chance).
No, the stupid, fucking movie has to be free of any subtlety or balance. No, the stupid, fucking movie has to show us Mrs Drayton all Spidered-up. No, the stupid, fucking movie has to show us a stranded team committing Drayton-.38-enabled suicide.
See, after all they’ve been through, they would not have given up. Drayton would not have shot his kid. The Drayton People didn’t lose it, didn’t give up. They would have fought to the fucking end. They would have found a fucking gas station, or a HoJo. Or they would have found a vehicle with gas. They would have gone down fighting.
But no.
No, the stupid, fucking movie has to pull an Ironic Ending, with Drayton surviving. No, the stupid, fucking movie has to show the Mist receding and the Army winning.
You see, it isn’t just about it being a good Monster Movie - it was. If I had not read the story, it would have worked much better. But the beauty of the story was that King didn’t take the easy route - The Mist wasn’t a stupid monster story where everything goes to shit and everybody dies horribly. The Mist was about hope, and about people who manage to retain their hides and their humanity in the face of an inhuman, horrendous challenge.
Then again, it’s just a movie, so fuck it. :rolleyes:
And I find it very sad, but richly ironic that King actually approves of the adaptation. Way to undermine your old work, buddy! But it’s your soup, feel free to shit in it and called it stew.
Yep, King likes it. Smells like increased box office to me, rather than an artistic decision.
It’s been reported that Darabont wants to put a black-and-white version on the DVD, if it can be done. Would the film look good in black-and-white?
I think I’ll wait for the DVD and turn it off when Drayton drives away from the grocery store.
I saw this tonight and it FUCKING KICKED ASS!!!
By far the most entertaining movie I’ve seen all year, possibly in the past 3 years. Crazy good character personalities, if somewhat cliched. The “the real monsters are the people for turning on each other” message was kind of played out with the Twilight Zone episode “The Shelter” and subsequent incarnations. The war-on-terror/public panic criticism was about as subtle as a mule kick (duct tape on windows?) and the black/hispanic/white soldier combo was a little hackneyed.
But the action scenes kicked ass. The monsters were badass. And the audience erupted in MASSIVE applause when the religious-nut woman got shot - I have never seen such an emotional and enthusiastic response from a movie audience before. There’s really something to be said for that.
We got the same reaction in the audience for the religious woman biting it, loudscale cheering and clapping complete with “woo”. I found parts of the movie quite humorous at times, too…I don’t know if that was deliberate or because it was so B-movie at times.
You know, I never read the original story but even as the ending was occuring I was like “damn, I hope they just leave it ambiguous, like they’re going to fight till the end” but they had to go for the “twist” approach.
We saw The Mist last yesterday. I feel I might have to put this whole post in a spoiler box. Now, I hate spoilers; but I’m not going to box it. If you don’t want to read the spoiler, please do not read this post. FWIW, I have not read the thread nor read the book.
***** SPOILER WARNING *****
I thought it started out OK. I was hoping for something supernatural though, rather than BEMs. The main conflict was not the Invaders From Another Dimension. Rather it was between the religious zealot and the rational people, with the subconflict between the Nice Neighbour and the Neighbour With The Persecution Complex. But we’ve seen religious zealots before. Carrie, anyone? Still not bad. As for the monsters, I’ve often thought about how the world would be if there were such things; but I’ve only imagined the scenario after they’d been here a while and people could take precautions (such as being armed, developing strategies, etc.). I hadn’t thought about an initial invasion. That was interesting.
Did ‘Brent Norton’ survive? I didn’t notice. The black guy in the pharmacy was the MP. I think I would have liked it if he had been shown realising just how wrong he was.
As the film neared its end, I thought I would have ended it with David, his son, Amanda, and the two oldsters driving off into the mist. Fade to black, roll credits. Basically the same ending as John Carpenter’s The Thing. (And I would ahve ended AI with the submarine trapped underwater. Batteries run down, F2B, RC.) But instead we get the hackneyed ending where the Hero ‘does what he has to do’ only to discover that if he’d waited two minutes everyone would be saved. How ironic! :rolleyes: My friend and I looked at each other as soon as the mechanical sounds came and the tank’s barrel poked through the fog and said, ‘Well, who didn’t see that coming?’ Predictable much? I will say that the shootings inside of the Landcruiser were well done.
Cool that Toby Jones was a shooter, though again it’s a bit predictable that The Guy Nobody Expects is the One With The Ability. The director had him flip the cylinder closed on the revolver to show that Ollie was some sort of expert. Come on. Who hasn’t flipped a cylinder closed? That shot seemed to be a stereotype used by people who don’t know enough about a subject.
So I was disappointed by the Government Meddles In Things It Shouldn’t device and the Scary Monsters instead of something more subtle. (Yeah, I know. Demons and ghosts aren’t necessarily subtle.) I thought the Zealot thing could have been done a little better. And I thought the Oh So Ironic! ending was too predictable.
Overall: ‘Meh. Worth seeing once on video.’
I liked the movie while watching it…right up until the last five minutes. :mad: They should have left it like it was in the story, because this was just too bleak for a SK ending. It’s not like this was a John Saul adaptation or anything.
I don’t have a cite, just gab from a horror board. The talk is that Darabont was very affected by the ending of the original Night of the Living Dead, and that he wanted to give audiences that kind of jolt.
I remember how shocked I was at the end of NotLD (saw it at a drive-in, first run). I didn’t for a minute think of it as a copout or a bad ending. It fit perfectly. Do you think The Mist ending fit? If you hadn’t read the story, would it have worked better for you?
Very often in horror, the less explained, the better.
I remember “The Jaunt”. Truly a moronic story. I like Stephen King, but he needs to not try and write anything resembling science fiction; he’s got the mind of a bright ten-year-old.
The fucked-up-ed-ness of the ending cannot be overstated. I’ll give a bit of the original story’s Chapter XI(The End), with some emphasis by me.
In the end, I suppose that the screenwriter and director went with the “neat endings” - no Alfred Hitchcock for us! We got the sunshine and the National Guard. I’m sooooooooo glad that we were spared the “cheap shot” of the original story’s ambiguous ending. Of course, we got the “neat ending” that King consciously, purposely eschewed in the story, to the point of mocking it via David Drayton’s note. Of course, now we have 2007 King agreeing with the re-write, in effect, mocking the 1980 King.
:rolleyes:
I know, it’s only a movie.
I have to disagree here. Perhaps the story wasn’t executed very well, but the haunting and nightmarish nature of going through awake (as well as the underlying premise) has fascinated me since I was a teen. I enjoy his science fiction.
As for the Darabont’s The Mist, I feel he spent too much time focusing on Carmody, and botched the ending a tad. I’m not usually one to complain about endings, I’m in the movie for the journey most of the time, but somehow this didn’t resound enough, or leave off on a note that felt more in sync with the rest of the story. I will admit, I was looking for more resolution than the novel offered, but, maybe this went too far? As for everything else, I had a pretty good time.
The ended was terrible. The kind of Outer-Limits/Twilight Zone parody that you’d see on “The Scary Door”.
“Why should I help you? You’re Hitler!”
The rest was pretty good.
Like just about everyone else in this thread, I hated the last five minutes (although I must admit the gunshots seen from outside the truck had a “Holy shit- he really did it” factor).
However, I absolutely loved every minute prior to that last five minutes. I thought the monsters were, if anything, even scarier than they were in the book (especially the spiders). And, yeah, everyone cheered when Mrs. Carmody got her ass capped.
How difficult would it be for someone to remix the movie to have the “real” ending, do you think? They could even do it as a voiceover by the main characters, talking about hearing the word “hope” on the radio as they drive off into the mist, and then roll credits. Just ignore the theatrical twist ending.
It’s rare enough to see a Land Cruiser used prominently in a movie, but an FJ-55 Land Cruiser is even more obscure. The one in the movie was particularly badass (I think it had a total of 9 off-road lights, even the little one on the side.) Side note - I have never seen an FJ-55 Land Cruiser that was NOT in the two-tone red and white color scheme.