Endings of the Mist book and movie

I'm really glad that I watched the movie of The Mist before reading the book. I was so disgusted by the movie that I did not want to read the book at all. However, I had time to get over my aversion to it and decided that I could handle the book after all. When I saw how short it was and knew I could read it fairly quickly, I started and knocked it out in one night. 

As I was reading it, I felt as if I was watching the movie all over again. The creators of the movie did a great job of following the book while only leaving out certain parts that they were still able to hint at. Reading it was a lot easier than watching the gruesome parts again. Everyone who had already read the book told me that the ending was different, which also convinced me that I could handle the book. I thought that a different ending would mean that they made it out of the mist and no one had to die. What actually happens is an open ending. Stephen King has left it up to the reader to decide their ending. There is no way that his wife survives all of those creatures if she was out in the garden or in the house - keep in mind that the picture window was broken so they would have gotten in. If it was up to me though, I would have let everyone else survive until the mist clears up and the military comes through and clears everything out. The producers of the movie chose to make their own ending by using events that the narrator has hinted at. In the book, the narrator mentions the gun and the three bullets that are left and what could happen when they run out of gas and are still trapped in the mist. The movie creators took the liberty of making an ending out of those suggestions. I personally prefer the open ending because then I can imagine for myself a much happier ending.