Terror en la niebla

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.

Allow me to save you $8 by offering something you can do at home that is just as entertaining as watching this movie. Go get a load of whites and throw it in your dryer. Now, add in one red sock. (Make sure everything's dry so you don't end up with a bunch of pink laundry.) Now, hopefully you have the kind of dryer that has the clear window in front. If you do, start the load and watch the laundry spin around. Every time you see the red sock pretend to be scared.

That's it. That's the equivalent to seeing this movie. As entertaining as watching your laundry dry and every bit as scary as a red sock.

Others have already punched all the holes in the plot (or complete lack thereof) that are necessary. I won't beat that dead horse. As mentioned, the acting was completely mailed in. The CGI was hokey, stilted and throw in in a lot of scenes unnecessarily. This wasn't just a really bad movie, this was a really bad horror movie. Most horror movies these days suck to one degree or another, but this moving distinguishes itself as being among the worst of the worst. Seriously, save yourself the time and energy and steer clear of The Fog. I haven't seen a horror movie this bad since I saw the remake of The Haunting.

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.

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.

I wasn't angry about The Fog remake until I heard that it was going to be released by Revolution Studios, a company known to house crap movies. From then on, my hopes weren't that high, and they sank even lower when I saw the trailer. It looked to much like Boogeyman or Darkenss Falls rather than an atmospheric, imaginative, horror production like the original.

The original Fog deserves to be a cult classic and is a great film, but I thought it could have used a couple of improvements. It was not John Carpenter's best effort, but it still was an 8 out of 10 movie. This remake had potential because it could have corrected some of the plot holes from the original. Not surprisingly, the modernized Fog created new loopholes in the story and in addition had a terrible script.

The characters here were clichéd. The naive young girl who sees "horrible things" happening and who is befriended by her "hot ex-boyfriend". There is even a token black guy who serves as the "comic relief" for the film. Why can't they have black heroes in horror movies? Every character is seen in some state of undress, including Stevie Wayne, a mother of a young teenage boy named Andy, who struts around in panties in front of her son (I thought that was funny). I'm surprised Andy's old nanny wasn't shown strutting around in her undies while cleaning the dishes.

The leper colony ghosts were not scary. They were all see through, and instead of a giant fishing hook, Father Blake carried a cane (WTF??), not for support while walking, but for a scene near the end of the film where flying glass shards contribute to the death of a character. Also, the fog in this film is all CGI, and is not nearly as menacing as the one in the original was.Father Malone's character in the original was a major contributor to the story, because he represented the sins of the founding fathers. In this one, he's just a stupid old drunk who has a minimal impact on the story and plays more like the typical "old lady who can see the future" kind of character. Also, why aim for a PG-13? It's obvious the filmmakers wanted to put some gore in this, and they did, because there were many deaths that involved people being maimed and/or set on fire, not necessarily in that order. Only a few more drops of blood and it would be R.

There are two good things though. There is one pretty shocking death scene that was cool and there were some cool cinematography shots. The eerie image of the sailors on their ship in the fog gave me the chills. There was also a really creepy ghost who was only shown in shadows (you never saw his face) and who wore a top hat. It would have been interesting if they showed that ghost more, but alas, they shied away from it.

And don't get me started on the ending. It's supposed to be a shocker, but it's extremely predictable. It also makes everything that preceded it make little sense. What was the point of that? Stevie Wayne's cheesy closing monologue was even cheesier than the concluding monologue in House of the Dead.

Overall, this dreadful remake ran shy of where it could have won the race.