Why The Mist’s Movie Ending Filled Stephen King With Regret
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
Stephen King has long been criticized for his inability to create satisfying story endings. When his stories are adapted for film, they usually improve King’s endings.
One such film is “The Mist.” King’s original novella ended the story on a note of hope; however, Frank Darabont’s movie adaptation featured a far more bleak conclusion.
In a SyFy interview, Darabont admitted that King prefers the bleak ending over his own. Both stories feature enormous creatures hiding in a fog and killing those outside.
The locals hide out in a local grocery store for safety. In the novella, the protagonist, Dave, flees the grocery store in a car and hears a person’s voice on the radio.
In the movie, Dave, his son, and others escape in a car. However, there’s no voice on the radio, and hope is lost, leading to Dave shooting the other survivors out of mercy.
Darabont shared, “He [King] also said, ‘I think every generation needs a movie ‘like Night of the Living Dead’ where nothing turns out well for anybody at the end.”