Ending The Mist Goes On

In an article titled, "The Mist, Love It Or Hate It," Lilja's Library posted a link to aintitcool news.  The article at aintitcool was a passionate defense of the ending of Frank Darabont's The Mist.  I loved it!  Totally disagree -- but enjoyed every bit of Quint's impassioned defense of dark endings.

The aintitcool article argues that not only are dark endings cool, but they are important for all movies because they add a layer of uncertainty to every movie watching experience.

Quint boils the issue of the Mist and the ending to this:

"So why does The Mist get singled out for its ending? I think people are a hundred times more comfortable with the idea of a big bad monster killing a person than the good guy having to pull the trigger."

I think he's right.  Really right.  And then he swings a home run,

"It would have been awful if a tentacle had come out of the gray clouds surrounding that car and yanked little Nathan Gamble out the window, sucking him into the mist for good, but people would have forgiven that. What many folks can't forgive is that Tom Jane's David Drayton is the one to kill his son."

Is this a nerd debate?  I suspected if you asked most people, they'd say, NO!  This is serious stuff.  But in truth -- it's a minor argument over a few seconds of film.  In big the scheme of things, doe sit really matter?  YES!  . . . oh, wait, my wife tells me she's never worried once about the end of The Mist.  Event though she saw it.  Not once since did she give a lot of thought to it.  Sigh.  Maybe it is a nerd debate; but it's an interesting one.

It's About Character

But let me be clear why it doesn't work for me.  It's that we are asked at the end of the movie to believe something about Drayton's character never presented to us in the rest of the film.  Let's just say, the guy at the end of the film isn't a guy I'd feel comfortable falling asleep in his car.  Throughout the film, Drayton is shown as stoic, strong, logical and ready to fight.  But when actually confronted by the monsters -- he doesn't fight, he kills his kid.  Grown men -- good guys -- don't kill little kids.  That's a pretty straight forward statement -- and it's true.  I'm not comfortable with a movie ending that tries to make the murder of a child A-OK; even cool.  I wonder if people who think this is a great ending have kids.  Of course, father's do kill their children.  And we as a society have agreed we're not cool with that.

Can you think of another scenario where it's okay for a father to kill his child?  Maybe a rapist breaks into the house, is about to rape his daughter -- so he shoots his daughter to save her from the rapist.  Doesn't work, does it?  Why?  Because you think, "why doesn't he just shoot the bad guy?"  Which make us wonder, why doesn't Drayton have any fight in him?  Why did he leave with no real plan to take on the enemy?  Wait -- But what if there's a lot of rapist after the father's girl, and he only has one bullet?  Would it be okay then to say, "You don't get my daughter!" and shoot her?  No.

Of course, The Mist offers a level of despair somewhere beyond the situations I suggested.  Because things look utterly hopeless to Drayton.  Drayton's decision at the end of the movie is a response to his own fear and hopelessness.  But he went out into the mist ready to fight and survive.  So all of his survival instincts wash away in an instant?

I'll just say that for me, the ending doesn't work because it's not the character we were presented with throughout the movie.

What I Like

My disagreement with Quint doesn't mean I didn't take his point.  In fact, I do have a new respect for the ending of The Mist; I see it through new eyes.  I don't agree, but I appreciate the perspective.  And I agree, dark endings are important.  I just want them to be -- logical.

In fact, I'm embarrassed (but not overly read faced!) to admit that Quint spots something I totally missed.  Remember Melissa McBride, who ran into the Mist to get home to her kids?  Quint writes:

Then there's the reveal that they were moments away from being saved. I'd say most who don't like the ending think it's because of this timing, but I'm not so sure. Their salvation was only moments away, but the real knife twist is when we see Melissa McBride and her family being transported past a completely broken Drayton.

What?  Of course everyone else saw it and got it -- but my entire focus was on what just happened, not on what was happening on screen.  No matter how many times I've seen that ending, I missed it!  Quint explains why that particular detail is so unnerving:

You see, he played it safe from the beginning. He did everything logically, thought through his options, and still this awful -- happened to him, yet she was reckless and ran into the mist to get home to her kids, danger be damned. She made it, her family made it, but calm, cool and collected David Drayton did not.

That's a great insight.  Of course, I didn't have that reaction, because I didn't  pick up on the fact that the lady at the end is the same lady who ran into the mist.  I was still thinking about Drayton's handy work with his gun.

Check out the article at aintitcool -- I liked it a lot.aintitcool.com