Awesome adaptation... until the ending

Rating: 9/10 (20 April 2008)

The Mist.
It's a novella by Stephen King about a massive electrical storm, the mist that follows, and what lurks in the mist. More than that, it is about people, human beings, reacting to a completely unknown situation where reality itself seems to be unwinding.
People begin to unwind, as well. Horrible deaths, murders, unbelievers, and a father's all-encompassing love for his son all make their fair showing.
The movie was great. I've read the story and the movie wonderfully adapted it to the screen, almost scene for scene.
I believe it accurately captured the look of the "creatures" based on how I imagined them, too.
The location was spot-on to what my brain had conjured, also.
Marcia Gay Harden surprised me with her exceptional portrayal of Mrs. Carmody, eagerly devolving (evolving?) from simple troublesome fear-monger to fire and brimstone Inquisition prophet.
A few things were missing such as the radio that David found his "hope" on (which guided the written ending), the fact that he actually makes it back to his house and finds out what happened to his wife, and he actually saw what the thing with the gigantic legs looked like. But the ending... ouch. The novella left everything open, folks driving toward a possible, or possibly not a last bastion of humanity and safety. That's a Stephen King ending. No explanation. No resolution.
The movie holy sh*t it slapped me in the face with the ending. It was probably the most cliché part of the movie and it hurt to watch it in more ways than one. I was totally not expecting it to end the way it did. Spoilers beyond spoilers to follow.
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I expected them to keep going and have the movie end with them still driving in to the unknown.
They ran out of gas.
I expected it to end there.
David counts the bullets: four bullets, five people.
I expect someone to talk him out of it.
His son wakes up.
Surely he will come up with a better plan now.
Four gun shots.
I bet he saved his son.
Oh f*ck! He shot everybody but himself! He shot the girl he was supposed to end up with. What the hell!
He freaks out and leaves the truck telling whatever is out there to, "Come on!"
I expect him to cry and scream, give up, crumple to the ground, and there get skewered by some ghouly and die. And the movie would end.
The tank shows up AND THE MIST CLEARS!
What? What? Are you serious? He runs out of gas at precisely the spot and at precisely the time that the military is going to be coming by about 15 minutes later? Just long enough for him to form the suicide pact and kill everyone and have them show up 30 seconds later? The military saving the f*cking day with flame throwers and gas masks? Holy sh*t! The woman who left the store to get to her eight year old kid actually survived? How? She walked through the mist? What's wrong with you?
The mist f*cking goes away just like that? What, did the military have special inter-dimensional fans strapped to their tanks or something?
Give me a f*cking break!
If it had an ending more like the novella's, I'd have given it a ten. It was still a great movie.
Awesome, actually.