10 Movie Plot Twists That Will TRAUMATIZE You
7. The Mist - The Rescue Comes Too Late
The Mist - which centres around a group of people trapped in a supermarket while a mist filled with deadly creatures envelopes the town - is a film tailor-made to traumatise its audience. Most notably, it contains one of the cruellest, most tragic endings ever committed to film.
Late in the movie, protagonist David Drayton (Thomas Jane), his son (Nathan Gamble) and three more survivors drive away from the supermarket into the mist, hoping to find rescue. They never do, and once they run out of gas, they decide to end their lives. David only has four bullets in his gun, so he kills his own son and the other three before venturing out into the mist to be killed... only for the military to come out of the fog. They were seconds away from rescue.
It's debatable as to how great this twist ending actually is. The directing, acting and music choice - The Host of Seraphim by Dead Can Dance, which is one of the most haunting pieces of music ever - cannot be faulted, yet it's also shock for shock's sake and feels thematically contradictory. The Mist is a horror story about the effects of paranoia and societal collapse, yet the group that actually did the right thing and avoided this suffered the cruellest fate of all.
One thing's for certain, though: this ending will shatter anyone who sees it, and it'll never be forgotten.