The Mist is a 2007 horror movie based on a Stephen King novella written and directed by Frank Darabont. The story follows a group of survivors held up at a grocery store when a mysterious mist envelopes them as far as the eye can see. Giant, Lovecraftian bug monsters emerge and attack. This story has a negative outlook on the nature of humans when faced with difficult or desperate situations. It is a story about the dangers of allowing fear to take control and losing all hope.

The ending of The Mist is one of those endings a movie goer never forgets. It's an "if only" moment with some traumatizing consequences. At the beginning of the movie, a woman played by Melissa McBride ventures out unknowingly into the mist in order to retrieve her children she left at home while grocery shopping. She asks for someone to come with her, but no one volunteers out of fear. The woman doesn't lose hope, and she doesn't allow her fear to take hold of her. She leaves by herself to find her children, never to be seen for the remainder of the movie until the very end. She even says how she hopes they all rot in hell.

RELATED: This Steven Spielberg Movie About An Alien Invasion Is Underrated

Throughout the movie, the people in the store start to become paranoid and lose hope. They turn on each other Lord of the Flies style when Mrs. Carmody begins preaching about God's wrath and the end of the world. At one point, they even let the woman convince them to make a sacrifice to the monsters so they will not be harmed for awhile. They hand over a soldier who says he may have been involved in a military experiment that got out of control. A father named David and his son Billy decide they need to leave because it is no longer safe in the store. Several others go with them, but only five (including David and Billy) make it to a vehicle before being killed by the creatures.

One of the people that leaves is a woman named Amanda who was carrying a gun. Though she dropped it outside the vehicle, David was able to grab it just in time before driving away. The group heads out into the unknown and encounter several larger-than-life bug monsters before running out of gas. They can go no further and give up all hope. Rather than wait to be torn apart by monsters, they take matters into their own hands. They still have the gun, but there are four bullets and five people—including the eight-year-old son, Billy. David decides he will sacrifice himself and kill the others, which he does all within a few seconds of each other.

At this point, there is nothing David can do but cry out in a mix of emotions after just ending his son's life along with three friends. He gets out of the car and challenges the monsters, begging them to end his suffering. Not even two minutes later, a large military squad pulls up with large trucks, a large army, and a lot of firepower. The mist begins to disappear and the monsters are easily killed by the army. To make matters worse, the woman from the beginning of the film rides by in one of the trucks along with her children looking David directly in the eyes. He lets out several screams that sound like a wounded and confused animal, and the soundtrack is filled with haunted voices all crying out in pain.

Frank Darabont said that this "was going to be one of those endings that people either really dug, or really hated," and he was OK with that. This is a situation where the audience can't help but feel the "horrendous irony" of the situation where if David had waited just two more minutes, everyone would have been saved. Darabont wanted the ending to be even more devastating, though. He wanted all of the members in the grocery store to be in the trucks to show how if David and the others had stayed put, they would have been fine. But many of the actors were not available any longer.

The ending of The Mist is much different than the novella Stephen King wrote. King's ending is a little more ambiguous and hopeful, where the 5 survivors head towards a city they believe to be safe after hearing so on the radio. Darabont's main goal was to make a more conclusive ending to the story, which King approved of. At the time, Darabont said he was having a very negative view on society and America's military, and he wanted a movie that reflected his feelings about the destructive nature of war on innocent people's lives. Darabont said this "felt like a valid way to end a movie" since not everything has to have a happy ending.

MORE: Tobey Maguire Was (And Still Is) The Best Spider-Man