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As a reviewer, I am well aware that I must, at all times and during all circumstances, be objective. So when I tell you that director Rupert Wainwright’s remake of The Fog is a foul, steaming river of bio-toxin infused leper diarrhea, it isn’t just because I love John Carpenter’s original version. It is truly because the remake is that horrendously bad.
The coastal town of Antonio Island, Oregon, is having a dedication ceremony, where they will be unveiling a statue of the town’s four founding fathers. The descendants of those men still live in the town. Nick Castle (Tom Welling) runs a fishing charter out of Antonio Bay. Stevie Wayne (Selma Blair) owns her own pirate radio station on Spivey Point, where she inundates the town with shitty nu-metal. Mayor Tom Malone (Kenneth Welsh) hangs around wearing a suit and being old. Father Malone (Adrian Hough) plays the lovable drunken priest. Kathy Williams (Sara Botsford) seems to head up the historical society, although that is never explicitly stated.
Williams’ daughter, Elizabeth (Maggie Grace, who is not attractive in the least, regardless of what millions of Lost fanboys claim), former girlfriend of Nick Castle, left town six months before for the Big Apple. This bummed Nick out, so he immediately slept with Stevie Wayne, at least three times. Driving into town one night, Nick sees a hitchhiker on the side of the road. Lo and behold, it is Elizabeth, back in town, having called no one. They resume their relationship right away as if nothing had happened. Does this happen? If it does, I guess I need to get out more.
Elizabeth has been having dreams of a clipper ship and innocent people on fire, jumping into the bay and drowning. Strange things are happening along the shoreline also, as crazy old Mr. Machen (R. Nelson Brown) has found artifacts with his metal detector, all of which bear the hallmark of an old scale.
When Castle’s partner in business, Spooner (DeRay Davis) takes the boat out for some hot white girl action, things take a turn for the worse. A fog bank rolls in against the wind. A huge clipper ship appears alongside Castle’s boat, the Seagrass. As the fog envelops the ship, strange shadows seem to board the boat. The next thing you know, you’ve got a couple of dead white girls and a tag-a-long buddy with a knife through his eye.
As the backstory unfolds, we learn that the founding fathers of Antonio Island were not the bastions of strength and courage the townspeople had been led to believe. The clipper ship, the Elizabeth Dane, was full of lepers who had struck a deal with the four men to purchase a portion of Antonio Island to use as their own personal colony. The founding fathers of the town killed all those aboard, set the boat aflame and used the money to build up their own town.
Now, those aboard the Elizabeth Dane have returned for vengeance against the descendants of those who had wronged them so terribly.
Having just read my synopsis of The Fog, it really doesn’t sound bad at all. So what happened here?
The main problem is that Wainwright, as he proved in Stigmata, has no clue how to tell a story. The Fog is a movie where trying to fill in the missing pieces counts as exposition. As an example, allow me to give you a small example of dialogue.
This is the entire explanation of why Elizabeth left both Nick and the island.
NICK: “So, I guess New York is just, like, the best thing ever, huh?”
ELIZABETH: “I wouldn’t say that.”
NICK: “Were you happy there?”
ELIZABETH: “Sometimes.”
Oh, the rich character texturing! The subtle layering that makes me care about the people I’m watching!
Let’s move on to the special effects, shall we? I realize it is hard to film fog without it looking like smoke. Hell, Carpenter couldn’t do it back in 1980, and I don’t believe there have been many breakthroughs made in the realm of special fog effects. But there is an overabundance of CGI fog here, which looks even more wrong and incongruent than the results of seven disco smoke machines. When the ghosts come out of the fog, they look silly. There’s no other word. There’s no fear, no dread, nothing. In fact, the crew and passengers of the doomed Elizabeth Dane, shown in silhouette on deck of the great ship, look like a group photo shoot of Velvet Revolver and Avenged Sevenfold.
Continuity is a problem in The Fog, as is a lack of research. A prime example is when the words “Mene, mene, tekel upharsin” are found upon the outer wall of the Malone family crypt. Father Malone is the one who discovers this and is visibly upset. I was visibly upset, too, when I realized that those words, which are straight from Scripture, were spelled incorrectly. The Bible is the most printed book in the country. It’s not like you couldn’t look that up and make sure you had it right.
And when the dedication of the monument finally happens, right before the shit hits the fan, there are only about ten people in attendance. There were more people at the mid-afternoon, by invitation only, rave in House of the Dead.
So we’ve established that The Fog makes little or no sense and that it was put together by monkeys, promised a Tootsie Roll pop if they’ll splice this movie together. Is there anything good about it?
The music, by Graeme Revell, at least has the good taste to rip off Carpenter’s original soundtrack, going heavy on piano for a minimal spooky tone which, unfortunately, is wasted on the lame-ass visuals.
I won’t even go into the ending, which is the most ridiculous, out of nowhere spark of retardation I’ve seen in years.
Here’s the kicker: John Carpenter himself was one of the producers on this. That’s like taking your own precious virgin daughter, giving her an ass tattoo and a few thongs and turning her out. When she comes back in, she’s an incoherent, drooling brain-damaged slut, but you don’t care, as long as the bitch has your money.
Brian Harris always encourages us to find something positive about every movie we review, so I will say this. I’ve never been that happy to see ending credits in my life.
