THE MIST director Frank Darabont stands by its brutal and violent ending

fun fact, Franco Darabontfilm adaptation of Stephen King’S The haze it was the first review I ever wrote that was posted online. I sent the review to Ain’t It Cool News back in the day and they posted it! That first review ignited a spark in me that made me want to start my own movie fanatic website, now here we are 15 years later!

Anyway, The haze it was such a good movie! I was already a big fan of King’s novella and 3D audio. But this movie brought the story to life amazingly but also changed the ending of the story and was quite controversial at the time.

When I first saw the film during an audience test screening, that ending felt like a brutal punch in the gut. It was an ending that really hurt. I understand what Darabont was trying to do with it and I was actually fine with the ending because of the emotion it stirred in me. I know people like those happy endings in Hollywood but that wasn’t it, this ending was devastating and Darabont was willing to take the audience to that dark place.

King’s novella ends with the story’s main character, David Drayton, catching a possible word through radio static; then he whispers a few words in his son’s ear. King writes, “One of them is Hartford. The other is hope.”

In the film, Drayton (Thomas Jane) shoots his son and three of the other survivors to spare them the horrors of being brutally killed by terrifying monsters. The gut punch came when not long after Drayton killed them all, help arrived. Darabont Has No Regrets About This Story/Film Eric Vespe:

“Hey, I love a happy ending just like anyone else. It’s satisfying. I have a happy ending, God knows. But I also love ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ I also love ‘The Thing’. I also love those movies that really dare to challenge the audience. Sometimes things just don’t work out and sometimes you’ve made the wrong decisions even though you had good intentions. That’s life.”

King was actually supportive of Darapont’s new ending, and the director continued:

“When Steve read the script and I said, ‘I’m not going to make it if you don’t want me to,’ he said, ‘We need movies that dare to piss people off. We need movies like that too. ‘ We need of that ‘Night of the Living Dead’ thing, where it’s not just tied up in a nice bow and there’s just this reassuring Hallmark bumper sticker.”

The film could have had a happier ending, where the survivors drive their car to Hartford and live to hope for another day. But as the director said: “Life doesn’t always give you a happy ending, does it?” In fact, Darabont turned down a bigger budget for the film because he wanted to keep his ending. Paramount Pictures wanted to do it for $60 million, and when Darabont didn’t want to go that route there was another producer who wanted to do it for $40 million, but it wasn’t going to work. Then Bob Weinstein chimed in:

“I walked away from the $40 million budget and the only person who stepped forward and got the cojones green light was Bob [Weinstein]. I got a call from Bob and he said, “I love your script, it’s great ending, but you have to make it for this price”, which was a little less than half of what the other guy was offering. So I had that night of the soul where I’m saying, “Instead of paying me my directing fee, I’m going to take the ladder.” Instead of giving myself some time to shoot, I’ll have to shoot halfway through the program.’ I’ve never, ever made a film like this before.”

Darabont ended up going to Stephen King for advice on what to do and he said, ‘He responded by saying, ‘Okay, so take the pay cut. by the way, there’s a great tradition in our genre of working with small budgets and limited resources: go make your film on a low budget.’ And I thought, ‘Okay, by God, I’ll do it.'”

He then asked Bob Weinstein to stay away while filming the film because he didn’t want there to be any changes from his original vision. Weinstein agreed and we got the movie we got and Darabont got his ending.

What did you think about The haze and the end of the movie?