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Can we talk about how the notebook ending in The Mist is actually the worst one and the movie got it right?
Everyone in my little horror group keeps saying the novella ending where they just drive off into the unknown is more "real" and the movie's gut punch finish was cheap shock value, and I just don't buy it. I read the story back in 2019 during a bad snowstorm here in Spokane and when I hit that last page I literally said out loud, "that's it?" because it just fizzles with no payoff. The movie version earns the whole run time, all that dread builds to one choice and then rips it away, and that is exactly what good tragedy is supposed to do. My buddy Dave argued for like 45 minutes that ambiguity is braver than a gut punch and I told him ambiguity can also just be a writer dodging the hard part. Stories that end on a shrug usually get remembered for the shrug, not the fear. If you change that movie ending to match the page version, you lose the reason anyone still talks about it 17 years later. So for the alternate ending crowd, am I wrong here, or does the quiet fade out actually work better for some of you?
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