# The Mist Ending Explained
The ending of The Mist is one of the most shocking and controversial conclusions in horror film history. Director Frank Darabont made a bold choice to completely change how Stephen King’s novella ended, creating a finale that leaves audiences devastated and questioning everything they just watched.
## What Happens at the End
In the film’s climax, the main character David Drayton and a small group of survivors escape the supermarket and drive through the mysterious mist in search of safety. As they travel, they discover David’s wife is dead and eventually the vehicle runs out of gas. Trapped with no apparent way out, David believes all hope is lost. He takes his gun and uses his last four bullets to mercy-kill the other survivors in the car, including his own son Billy. After firing these shots, David steps out of the vehicle and screams for the creatures to come and kill him.
Then something unexpected happens. The mist begins to clear, and the U.S. Army arrives to exterminate the creatures and rescue survivors. David realizes in horror that help was coming all along. He collapses in anguish, realizing his actions were completely unnecessary. Adding to the tragedy, one of the survivors is the woman who left the supermarket at the very beginning of the disaster, now safe and reunited with her children.
## Why Darabont Changed the Ending
Stephen King’s original novella ended on a darker but more ambiguous note, leaving readers with some sense of possibility. Darabont deliberately chose to create a definitive and shocking conclusion instead. King himself approved this major change to his source material. The director wanted to amplify the story’s central message about human nature under extreme pressure and the consequences of despair and panic.
## The Deeper Meaning
The ending serves as a powerful anti-war allegory that explores what happens when ordinary people face extraordinary circumstances. The film uses the mysterious mist and its creatures as a catalyst to reveal the flaws and survival instincts within everyday people. When fear and paranoia take over, people make terrible choices based on terror rather than maintaining hope or seeking alternative solutions.
The most important theme the ending conveys is that sometimes the greatest horrors are self-inflicted, born from the absence of hope. David’s tragedy is not caused by the creatures or the mist itself, but by his own decision to give up. The film suggests that the real monster is not what lurks in the fog, but what lives inside us when we lose faith.
The cruel irony of the ending is perfectly timed. There are exactly four bullets left in the gun, and the mist dissipates immediately after David fires those four bullets. This creates a sense of inevitability and fate, suggesting that no matter what David did, he was always going to end up in this tragic situation. The woman who fled the supermarket at the start survives by choosing hope and action instead of despair, contrasting sharply with David’s choice.
## The Impact and Reception
The ending is designed to make viewers feel bad. It is deliberately bleak and offers no comfort or redemption. This is not an ending meant to satisfy audiences but to disturb them and force them to think about the themes of the story. The controversial conclusion has ensured that people continue discussing The Mist years after its release, examining what the ending means and why Darabont chose such a devastating path for his characters.
The film explores how heightened terror draws out and amplifies tensions and disagreements that already exist beneath the surface of society. Mrs. Carmody, the religious fanatic character, preaches that the mist is divine punishment, and the dark ending weirdly suggests her claims may have held some truth, adding another layer of complexity to the story’s interpretation.
## Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S05dXXZQJLY
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1663640/news/
