I’ve never been a huge Stephen King fan, but along with the short story ‘Crouch End’ his novella The Mist rates high on my list of favourite Lovecraftian genre literature. In truth it’s been a while since I’ve read the novella, but was pleasantly surprised to discover this week that Frank Darabond’s cinematic adaptation does an outstanding job of remaining true to its source material - up to a point (about five minutes before the end to be exact).
Notably, I wasn’t put off by the quality of the CGI effects (which seems to be the principle criticism levelled at the film) - perhaps a result of Darabond’s skill at keeping me engaged with the story rather than the spectacle. Indeed, I felt that the film made excellent use of the eponymous mist - especially toward the end of the film - as a means of suggesting rather than depicting some of its monstrous inhabitants. However, I have a rather different view of what is, perhaps, the most controversial issue surrounding the film, namely its 'shock' ending which deviates from (or rather provides a coda to) the novella’s original ending. Much has already been said about the film’s denouement - especially by the hoards of dullard internet critics who found it too depressing (it’s a horror movie for god’s sake!). Even so, I feel bound to add my tuppence to said discussion. Undoubtedly Darabond makes an exceedingly brave attempt at producing a horror movie with what is (at least in relation to most horror films) a very dark and horrifying conclusion. And, admittedly, he succeeds in some good measure.
That said, I maintain some reservations about the ending wherein - SPOILER ALERT - the protagonist shoots his own son and a host of other folks to spare them from the mist, only to discover moments later that the cavalry - in the form of flamethrower-weilding military types - has arrived to save the day. Added to this the fact that said protagonist's distress is made all the worse by the appearance of a young mother and her children amongst those saved by the military. This moment is, presumably, meant to evoke a moment of horrifying irony given that said woman appeared briefly at the beginning of the film, where she flees into the arms of certain death after being shamefully refused help in finding her children by the frightened men holed up in the mist-beseiged supermarket.
A few minutes before the shock ending (and the point at which King’s novella actually ends) we are treated to a much more powerful scene where the surviving protagonists, having fled the supermarket, encounter the absolute apocalyptic enormity of the film’s narrative premise when they are overtaken momentarily by the massive tentacular thing of cyclopean proportions striding through the mist. Darabond, at this moment, manages to captures a sense of utter incomprehending despair and resigned horror on the face of the actors that is, in this reviewers mind, far more powerful than the very human horror that unfolds in the concluding moments of the movie. This moment of realisation exemplifies a very Lovecraftian expiation (to borrow a term from the film) of consciousness where the very fact of self-awareness becomes blasphemous in the face of what an awareness of the wider cosmos has to offer. Indeed, this expiation of consciousness is not only foreshadowed in the mindless and totalitarian immersion in religion explored earlier in the film, but also via the three suicides that occur during the movie (although guilt rather than a refusal to face the horrors of the mist are suggested causes in two of these cases). In this respect, the subsequent mercy killing by the protagonist of his son and companions isn’t the problem here - in fact, the shock ending would have been more powerful if the protagonist actually had enough bullets to kill himself, fade to credits. Self-immolation is, after all, the most rational of responses to a Lovecraftian cosmos!
As such it is the addendum to the mercy killings where Darabond’s film ultimately disappoints. At this point the facade of a intelligent horror film is stripped away to reveal a rather banal morality tale aftyer the forces of darkness have been dispersed by the cleansing fire of military might. By way of explanation: initially the film sets itself up as a kind of Lovecraftian Lord of the Flies - a commentary on the fragile and ultimately brutal, self-serving nature of the human condition: ‘as a species, we are insane’ comments one character. Yet the film's finale appears to offer a moral condemnation of the actuality of a Lovecraftian universe at the precise moment it accepts that actuality. This is, indeed, the final nail in the film’s coffin: it is not that it’s suggestion of apocalyptic cosmic horror is undermined by the emotional horror of having unnecessarily taken the life of one’s child, but what the reappearance of the young mother and her children signifies. In the same way that those that have sex end up the first to die in typical slasher movies, the young mother's re-appearance implies that the horrible fate of the other characters was deserved - a punishment for transgressions of socio-moral norms and a lack of faith in the fundamental goodness of human nature. Thus, while trying to challenge our assumptions about the actual scope and nature of human 'good' (especially those grounded in religion) the film ultimately emasculates itself by inadvertantly supporting those assumptions. In other words, this is actually a film with a happy ending.
