Terror en la niebla

I was so disappointed about this. When I first heard they were remaking it, I was worried, but gave it every chance to actually be good. It wasn't. Everything that was good in the original was ruined in this one. There was no "atmosphere" to it, it was just a bunch of overly-beautiful WB-age stars thinly acting out a poor script. The whole purpose of the lighthouse and Stevie Wayne was to present this feeling of isolation and loneliness...in the new one, they seem to rarely use the lighthouse at all. There are extra points in the plot that are unnecessary and... and, I can just go on and on. It was just horrible.

Then, I tried looking at it not as a "remake" but just as a regular movie, as though I was seeing the story for the first time. But, you know what: it still sucks. It doesn't capture you. There are a few good scenes and shots, but overall I just kept wondering when it would be over. So much potential with a story and it just didn't work.

Unfortunately, that's Hollywood today. Horror films can be well made at the same time. Maybe they should stop relying so much on picture-perfect actors and corny digital special effects and start focusing more on the story, the characters, the music (Lord, the original score added so much), and just making it entertaining! 3 out of 10.

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.

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.

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.