The Fog (2005)

The Fog...2005...100 minutes...PG-13...starring Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, Selma Blair,and DeRay Davis...written by Cooper Layne based on the 1980 screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill....directed by Rupert Wainwright

Antonio Bay, a fishing village off the coast of Oregon, is about to celebrate its 100th year anniversary, and Elizabeth Williams has come back from New York just in time to meet up with her old fling, Nick Castle, and be part of the festivities. Both of these people are descended from the founding fathers of Antonio Bay...and a bit of town history is about to catch up with them as well as several other people when a mysterious fog rolls in....

If this plot sounds at all familiar, that's because this movie is indeed a redo of the Carpenter film from 1980. John Carpenter does seem to be the man to "redo", what with new versions of "Halloween" and the prequel to "The Thing" released not too long ago. This film may have started the trend as it preceded both of them, and did have Debra Hill Productions involved as well. Still, one wonders how other Carpenter films were thought of as viable source material...don't get me wrong, I like his movies just fine...but this new version didn't exactly take the movie world by storm.

In the review I wrote up for the 1980 film, I mentioned that Carpenter's films often had a sense of the surreal to them, as if we were watching a celluloid capture of a nightmare. This time, we have a lot less of that sense of mystery and "What the hell?"... we learn more of the whole history of Antonio Bay, as well as understand why Elizabeth had to come back at that time. Of course, in the first film, Jamie Lee Curtis's Elizabeth is indeed a stranger with an interesting name that really does come to town at THE worst time. This version's Elizabeth is an integral part to the whole haunting. So, we gain more of a sense of story in this version.

That's about all we get. For some reason, I found the characters in the original much more interesting as people than the folks we get in this movie. We get a hint that Stevie Wayne and Nick Castle were involved at some point...is Stevie's boy Nick's? That might have been interesting to explore...but I'm not sure I would have cared. Part of what worked for me in the first movie is that these people basically got sucked into a nightmare that they really didn't deserve or even know about, but I somehow liked the characters enough that the haunting really felt sinister. This time, that connection wasn't there.

Even the enhanced effects didn't work for me...sure, the effects in the 80s version were cheesy, but one thing I will say that might have helped the older film: the spectres aren't vaporous themselves, but all too solid. They were the tangible fear IN the fog, and while their appearance can't be explained, a viewer doesn't doubt that these things can grab you and dice you up.

Honestly, this film just left me kinda "meh" with the added "Why does every haunting have to have a motive?". Maybe Carpenter was on to something...maybe the real fear in the supernatural is that there's no real explanation for why something like this might happen. Fear isn't completely rational; should our ghost stories be?

I give this movie 2 pocketwatches out of 5.