The Fog - Nebel des Grauens

I tried; I REALLY tried to act like I had never seen the John Carpenter masterful ghost story.

I tried to look for any bright spots in this remake. Really.

*Here there May Be Spoilers*

It tried...once. To expand on the original story of the Ill-fated ELIZABETH DANE, the clipper ship of lepers that was trying to establish an isolated community on some prime Oregon (originally California) Real Estate. We got about ten minutes of sporadic flashbacks to Captain Blake and his doomed maritime colony...gratuitous flashes of potentially leprous individuals...many absurd off-camera killings. In short, it COULD have shown, using the technology Carpenter didn't have, leprous-ghosts seeking revenge; a flashback story behind Captain Blake, his wife and colony and the greedy, frightened '4' ancestors... But it didn't. And what in the heck was with the ending???

What it did do, was take what was originally a well-fleshed story, with characters in peril...and turn it into a diseased, pustulant, rotting corpse that didn't even have the nerve to bombard us with gore, FX, or nudity to camouflage the dung-heap it was. I saw it on a Free Cinemax Preview...and still wanted my money back.

Remakes are the fashion nowadays, and The Fog was a good candidate. Not because the original is bad, but because it was so good that it's strong story could likely stand the test of updating. Unfortunately, the remake turned out not to be much of a test.

To make this short, the only good things in this movie are Selma Blair and some sweeping shots across the island and surrounding water. Tom Welling is ineffectual in the lead role, and - on this evidence - Maggie Grace simply cannot act. She comes across as a Paris Hilton type - someone famous for being something else, who tries their hand at acting and fails miserably. The ineptness of her performance is such that it really detracts and takes the viewer out of the movie.

Some things get changed around from the original, not for any great benefit. With the journal in Grace's hands, we get the backstory piecemeal and in a more confusing way than in the original movie. For a horror movie, there is virtually nothing to get scared by. The ghosts are about as scary as the ones from Pirates of the Caribbean.

In all, this film is actually a testament to the skill of the makers of the original movie, which is superior in every respect. Twenty years later, with far more technology at their disposal, the result is an abject failure on every level.

In Antonio Island, Oregon, the dwellers are celebrating the anniversary of the foundation of the seaside town and the mayor has built the statues of the founders: Wayne, Castle, Williams and Malone. The descendant Nick Castle (Tom Welling) owns the Castle & Son, a fishing charter company, using his vessel Seagrass for tourism in the Antonio Bay. When his girlfriend Elizabeth Williams (Maggie Grace) returns to the island, coincidently a huge fog appears with weird noises and killing locals. When Elizabeth slips in Nick's boathouse and falls in the sea, she finds an 1871 journal written by a man called Blake, who bought half the island for his leper people to build a town for them to live. While sailing in the clipper ship Elizabeth Dane, bringing his community to Antonio Island, Blake is betrayed by Wayne, Castle, Williams and Malone. The quartet locks Blake and his friends in the vessel, steals their money and possessions and fires the ship, killing them. In the present days, the ghosts of Blake and his crew are seeking for revenge on the descendants of the criminals.

1981 "The Fog" is a dark ghost story of the master of horror John Carpenter, with great cinematography and special effects, giving a scary atmosphere without the need of gore. The screenplay builds the horror in a low pace, but increasing the tension.

I decided to see this remake just because of the names of Tom "Clark Kent" Welling, Maggie "Shannon Rutherford" Grace and Selma Blair. In spite of my wish of liking this movie, unfortunately it is terrible. The story is basically the same, but the modifications in the original screenplay are awful and confused. The edition never reaches the tension, and for example, I have not understood why Elizabeth leaves Antonio Bay (and Nicholas Castle) with the ghosts, or the modification in the statue of the angel in the cemetery. The songs that the DJ Stevie Wayne presents in her station are the best this movie offers to the viewers. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "A Névoa" ("The Fog")

This is a film that's not concerned with characters, not concerned with story, not concerned with atmosphere, and I'd even go so far as to say it's not concerned with even formula. It's focus is one thing, and one thing alone: spectacle. After all, this isn't the small independently financed ghost story from 1980 – oh no, it can afford explosions, flashy CG effects, and bodies flying through windows every chance it gets. It wants to show you the flashy screen distractions it purchased with its larger budget.

Yes, this is the Mission Impossible of cinematic horror remakes. But apparently the new Fog could not afford the "horror" as in "horror movie" as in "why am I watching this counterintuitive genre film?" Early in the film, the fog first appears out of nowhere overtaking a small fishing ship where two guys and two girls would be doing something naughty except for the tiny detail that they live in a PG13 film. So, instead, the girls are dancing and the black guy has a video camera. Right. Not that I have anything against PG13 horror (the 3 good ones), but when every inch of the celluloid is screaming for an R rating, don't water it down.

Moving on: after the fog mysteriously materializes out of nowhere, making all the boat's equipment go haywire, the party's over. The girls are inside the ship's bridge, the guys are out on deck where an old sailing vessel came out of the fog and vanished. The fog gets the girls first and, are you ready for this, throws their bodies through a window. Ghosts in the fog go through the trouble of throwing bodies through windows.

It's a thing called subtlety. This film does not have it.

Wait, I'm not through – it's not enough for a man to burn to death. Oh no, his smoldering skeleton has to fly through a door, across an entire room, and crash into equipment. And the film's climax? Lots of shattered glass. Flying CG glass. An old man thrown through yet another window, magically pushed across a street, and into a cemetery. Not to mention more fire.

Did it occur to anyone on this film that "hey, maybe we should pull back a tad before this reaches ridiculous levels?" Or, I dunno, "Maybe our effects shouldn't be exponentially more developed than every other aspect of this film." Yes, the effects are the Fog's strong point. I'll skip the story criticism out of pity, and simply say that the Fog brings nothing new to the overused flashback device. It's not bad, just mediocre. And sadly, juxtapose to the two leading performances in the film, I wanted to stick with the flashbacks and forget about the characters in the current time line. The acting, wow, to quote Colonel Kurtz, "the horror, the horror." Tom Welling and Maggie Grace, our leads, demonstrate their knowledge about acting, and curiously made me question whether or not they actually know how to act (I'll reserve my judgment for now.) They know to look left, to look up, to look sad, to look happy, to make eye contact, and yet they never emote. Through the entire film the audience never sees the characters Nick Castle and Elizabeth Williams. We see Tom Welling and Maggie Grace making semi-appropriate faces and gestures to match the mood and scenarios they find themselves in. And I use the phrase "semi-appropriate" deliberately because throughout the performances both actors are clearly suppressing smiles even in their most horror strickened, soul tearing, depressing moments. You know, like the type of acting you'd expect from TV commercial actors? Like Jason Ritter from Freddy Vs Jason.

Maybe they didn't care. Maybe they didn't try. Considering the roles handed to them (and everyone else on the film) I can't say I'd blame them were that the case. Nick is supposed to be something of a renegade stoic youth, his own man with his own business, unbound by the history books or silly traditions. Elizabeth is supposed to be the girlfriend looking for the answer to her nightmares, looking for her place in the world. Spooner is the goofy token black guy. Stop me when this sounds familiar.

Truthfully, I found myself longing for the film to explore the role of the torn alcoholic Father Malone (one of the background character) than spend any more time with Nick and Elizabeth. Or perhaps even his dad, city official Tom Malone. Unlike the two lead characters, these men showcase a few hints at psychological depth – even if those hints were nothing more than an overused writing device. At the very least the actors playing them display a conviction in their parts.

Perhaps the most intriguing character in the film, also the most underused, comes in the form of Stevie Wayne played by Selma Blair. Who, interestingly, plays the character of a jaded disc jockey. Yes, an actress playing an unenthused woman is the highlight, the inspiration, and arguably the most vibrant performance in the entire movie simply because there within lies an actual character.

Because when Selma Blair looks up from behind her mic and sighs, the audience actually gets the sensation that that's what the character, Stevie Wayne, would do. Tom Welling and Maggie Grace, they look up at a cued time because that's what the director has told them to do. They are actors acting, but Stevie Wayne is real.

One of the few genuine characters in the film.

It's bad enough that Hollywood has finally run out of original movie ideas, that they have resort to making either A) sequels to successful past movies that don't come close to the original, B) movies based on successful books/video games that don't come close to the original, or C) remakes of successful movies that don't come close to the original. This version of John Carpenter's subtle masterpiece "The Fog" falls into Category C. I was worried when I heard they were remaking this, and I wasn't disappointed (I should get a job predicting movie success/failures--no one believes me, but I'm right at LEAST 90% of the time). I was hoping it would stay true to the original, but so many liberties were taken to "make it so that modern audiences could relate to it" that it became a totally different film, and I don't mean that as a compliment. I mean, I can understand the modern music at the radio station and the up-to-date equipment. But why the gratuitous sex scene? Why the hoochy-koochy-dancers on the boat? And why make Elizabeth and Stevie related to the Founding Fathers (the FF's last names are never given in the original, except for Malone)? Also, there was never any logical REASON for the "attack"--at least in the first movie, it was the 100th anniversary of the crime that brought on the revenge (the crime took place in 1880; the movie was made in 1980). This crime took place in 1871, and the revenge took place in 2005?? 134 years?? That made less than no sense. And that ending?? Talk about anti-climactic. At least in the original, it ended the way it should have--it followed the plot line, it was the REASONABLE conclusion. This one--I only stayed with it to see how it played out, and it was completely unreasonable. I won't give it away, but it made NO sense to the plot. The special effects weren't even enough to redeem this sad excuse for a remake--I kept making jokes about "Pirates of the Caribbean" throughout the whole thing! I couldn't help it--I had to salvage this film somehow! That was the part that was so GOOD about the original, that you never really SAW the faces of the ghosts or graphic details of what they did--think "Blair Witch", people--less is MORE. The human imagination is the best scare tactic on the planet! Once you put a face on the fear, you can deal with it. It's the fear you CAN'T see that messes you up for days on end! All in all, another wasted rental from Blockbuster.