The Fog

In watching this movie, I witnessed the complete destruction of any and all elements from the original 1980 film, The Fog, that made it worthwhile. This shameful remake not only ripped out any semblance of terror, but it added in the most preposterous storyline ever. Having seen the original film, I was somewhat prepared to run with this one, but judging by the uproarious laughter I heard in the audience, I’m sure that those not fortunate enough to have seen John Carpenter’s 1980 version probably felt that someone in Hollywood had gone utterly insane.

The filmmakers apparently didn’t like how the original movie featured a foreboding explanation of the point of the story, which thereby set up the necessary background for the entire film, so they instead jumped straight into the middle for the remake. Nick Castle (Tom Welling) lives in the small town of Antonio Bay, which is days away from celebrating its centennial anniversary. He operates a small fishing boat with his friend, Spooner (DeRay Davis), who is supposed to be hip and cool but is bogged down by horrendously awful dialogue. Despite the fact that flocks of birds start abruptly vacating the island and dogs start barking frantically and then spontaneously combusting, Spooner ignores these obvious indications to flee the island and instead heads out on the boat with two drunk hot chicks wearing bikinis. As Spooner has gone to the trouble of setting up the most clichéd situation for preliminary slaughtering ever, the fog has no choice but to acquiesce and kill them all totally dead. Meanwhile, Nick and his girlfriend, Elizabeth (Maggie Grace), wander around town until the resident crazy old man can approach them and flaunt an old pocket watch that he found washed up on shore. He shakes it at them ominously, spews out some hideous dialogue, and warns that “everything comes back from the sea!” The malevolent fog descends on the island at this point, and secondary characters either start dying violently or simply develop a random case of leprosy, although the audience still isn’t quite clear as to why.

Eventually, through a series of flashbacks toward the end of the movie, the viewer is finally shown that the fog is attacking the town because the original founding fathers of Antonio Island had evilly stolen a leper colony’s gold and then burned them all alive on their boat. It’s a sad state of affairs that intentionally misleading the leper ship off course into a rocky cliffside in the original movie wasn’t shocking enough for audiences, that the filmmakers had to make the founding fathers ten times more sadistic in their treachery. As the final insult atop this decrepit feast of hideousness, the writers added an absurd ending that nearly had me frothing at the mouth in frustration.

The scenes in this version somewhat mirror the scenes from the original, with Dan the weatherman in his office, and Stevie Wayne’s (Selma Blair) son trapped in the house, but the director, Rupert Wainwright, opts to make them as boring as possible. So seriously does Wainwright take his mission to bore an already confused audience, that he eliminates one of the most terrifying scenes from the 1980 film and replaces it with complete nonsense.

Needless to say, I can’t think of anyone who would like this movie, unless it is viewed on a DVD with a huge case of Corona. Perhaps I’m just not frightened of fog since I live in San Francisco where it really does chase one around at times; of course, I’ve never seen it when it feels particularly malicious, but then again, I also never went out and killed a boatload of pirates who then swore eternal vengeance on my ancestors either. I emphatically don’t recommend betraying leprotic pirates, nor do I recommend seeing this film. See the 1980 version instead.