Book into Movie: The Mist
Like most Stephen King novels, The Mist, takes place in Maine after a vicious storm. A mist starts to creep up onto the mainland from the water. The mist soon takes over the land and people who go into it do not come back. Before the mist comes into the land, the main character, David, and his son, Billy, go into town for groceries. In town, David and Billy become trapped in the grocery store, afraid to go outside for fear of what’s out in the mist.
The Mist is a social commentary on how people react when trapped together and are afraid. Some turn to religion, others denial, some are paralyzed with fear, and others turn to logic. In the end, the people in the grocery store are ready to turn on each other and the main characters need to make a decision: what is scarier – what’s in the grocery story or what’s outside?
King does an amazing job of using a horrifying situation to manifest the darkest of demons that lie within all of us. We hope that we would do the right thing, but faced with devastating fear – would we? There is a scene in which a mother is trapped in the store and her children are alone at home. The mother begs someone to go with her to rescue her children. No one in the store moves to help her. Would you?
The movie follows the same theme of the book, and then the ending happens.The ending was in complete contradiction of the book.The ending of the book is ambiguous, whereas the film gives you a definite, shocking, horrible, “what was the director thinking” kind of ending? Movies based on books can be different, but the problem with the movie is that it denied its characters. The ending is in complete contradiction to everything that the character’s had done to survive up to that point.The ending is simply there to be shocking without any regard to the character development.
The characters are what held the movie together and kept the plot moving. Then the ending happened. The ending was so horrific that it ruined the entire movie. If you’ve read the book, spare yourself this movie.
