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Printer-Friendly ModeThe Fog boring, not at all scary
October 17, 2005 —
Everyone who once thought that dark, foggy nights were scary should have a seat - I have some bad news.
Rupert Wainwright has destroyed both the original movie The Fog and the notion that fog is something we should fear.
John Carpenter's The Fog was one of those lesser-known horror classics that was good and creepy without resorting to nonstop bloodshed. Carpenter, who made a name for himself as writer/director of quite possibly the greatest horror movie ever made, Halloween, knew a thing or two about creeping out moviegoers.
Wainwright, on the other hand, can't even scare the fools who are running for their lives in his movie.
Carpenter's big advantage was that he knew how to utilize the scenery of the movie. He managed to take the small fishing village that serves as the film's setting and use it to generate fear. The town by itself is not scary, but the way that the movie is filmed in the town makes it scary.
Furthermore, Carpenter made the fog the main character of the movie. The fog was treated like one of the actors, not just a special effect. It was given more screen time than high profile actors like Janet Leigh and Hal Holbrook, and rightfully so - it was the main attraction of the movie.
Wainwright reduces the fog to a stupid special effect, where it rolls in, murders people and rolls out, all the while stirring up more laughter than screams in the audience.
And I didn't think it was possible, but Wainwright actually manages to make a cemetery the least scary place in the whole movie.
The other big problem with the movie is that, unlike the original, it just shows too much. When it comes to great horror movies, one simple phrase still holds true - less is more.
This modern translation of The Fog reveals too much about the murderous beings in the fog. The original did a much better job of keeping these entities mysterious in order to create tension and wonder. Here, a hastily thrown together back story sums up the motive for the mayhem.
And, thanks to some more ho-hum CGI, when the beings in the fog make themselves visible they are about as scary as a pack of Juicy Fruit. Why do these big-budget horror movies insist on using CGI villains? A man in a rubber zombie mask would be more terrifying.
All of this would be partially forgivable if the movie were at least a tiny bit as entertaining as the original.
Sadly, the characters are all boring and nobody cares whether they survive or not. The only minor star in the whole cast is Selma Blair, who takes over as the lighthouse-occupying radio DJ who was played by a far more enjoyable Adrienne Barbeau in the first Fog.
There are a number of other things wrong with this movie, but it shouldn't be necessary to mention them all. Hopefully, everyone has already decided to spend a little less money and a lot less patience and just rent the John Carpenter version of The Fog. It was a great movie in its day, and it remains a great movie now. Only someone blinded by zombie-infested fog wouldn't be able to see which of the two versions is the better one.