Underrated Stephen King Movie With The Most Shocking Ending of All Time Is Now Streaming on Prime Video
We continue to live in unprecedented times and while we persist throughout the neverending horrors, sometimes you just need a good, nihilistic movie to match the mood. Sure, you could go for the original Martyrs or a classic like Salo, 120 Days of Sodom. Or, you could go for a classic Stephen King adaptation from 2007: Frank Darabont’s The Mist. Even better? It’s now streaming on Prime Video.
If you’re unfamiliar with this modern classic:
After a powerful storm damages their Maine home, David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his young son head into town to gather food and supplies. Soon afterward, a thick fog rolls in and engulfs the town, trapping the Draytons and others in the grocery store. Terror mounts as deadly creatures reveal themselves outside, but that may be nothing compared to the threat within, where a zealot (Marcia Gay Harden) calls for a sacrifice.
Darabont was no stranger to the works of Stephen King, as he previously adapted The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. While he was familiar with King, he had never adapted a more horror-focused title. King’s original short story of the same name was initially published in 1980 as part of the Dark Forces anthology. Then, an edited version was published in King’s 1985 short story collection collection, Skeleton Crew.
While Darabont wanted to remain loyal to King’s vision, he knew he wanted a different ending. But he also wanted the blessing of the horror master.
In a 2016 interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Darabont explained that if King didn’t like the ending, then Darabont wouldn’t have made the movie full stop. But thankfully that wasn’t the case.
Darabont told Yahoo Entertainment, “[King] read [the script] and said, ‘Oh, I love this ending. I wish I’d thought of it.’ He said that, once a generation, a movie should come along that just really pisses the audience off, and flips their expectations of a happy ending right on the head. He pointed to the original Night of the Living Dead as one of those endings that just scarred you.”
A comparison to the incomparable George A. Romero from Stephen King himself? Now that’s high praise.
King himself explained his love for the film’s ending in a 2017 interview with Yahoo Entertainment.
“When Frank was interested in The Mist, one of the things that he insisted on was that it would have some kind of an ending, which the story doesn’t have — it just sort of peters off into nothing, where these people are stuck in the mist, and they’re out of gas, and the monsters are around, and you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” King said. “When Frank 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.”
I saw The Mist in theaters when it was first released in 2007 and had no idea what awaited us in the film’s final moments. As the credits rolled, my dad and I sat stunned in our seats as we watched perhaps one of the bleakest endings we’d ever seen in a horror movie (at least a modern horror movie). As Thomas Jane screams and the army truck pass by, my brain was empty and all I could think was, “Why??”
If you’re craving a sad night in, then sprint over to Prime Video and give The Mist a watch. Come to see Marcia Gay Harden get her comeuppance, stay to witness one of horror’s most hopeless endings.
Categorized:News
