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The Fog [Remake]
Not foggy enough
2005
Review: November 6, 2005
Director: Rupert Wainwright
Starring: Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, Selma Blair, Rade Serbedzija
Anything would help.
THE SETUP:
Fog brings in pissed-off leper ghosts seeking vengeance on the descendants of a town’s founders.
DISCUSSION:
This one wasn’t really by choice. It was my last night in my old apartment, everything I had was boxed up, and here was nothing I could do. Plus I was exhausted from packing. So I thought, what the hell, I’ll go see The Fog.
I was never a huge fan of the first Fog. I love maritime stuff, especially spooky sea stories, but it was just too arbitrary and just no interesting enough throughout for me. Plus I just don’t respond to the oeuvre of John Carpenter. But I like the whole atmosphere, and this seemed better than Doom or something like that.
The movie opens with some old clipper ship being set on fire, and four guys rowing away. One of the guys is killed because we need to kill someone at the beginning, and this whole thing is never really explained for the rest of the movie. We soon find out that these four guys (but wouldn’t it be three if only three made it to the town?) were the founders of Antonia Island (not Antonia Bay anymore), and we pretty much know that they’re jerks.
So then we flash forward for some character building with Tom Welling and his wacky black companion. Tom runs a sport fishing business on this island off of Oregon. Oregon looks great, I have to say. Then before you know it this girl Elizabeth shows up from his past. Elizabeth apparently left without a word and took off to New York, and now, six months later, is equally inexplicably back. Tom doesn’t seem phased by this, or irritated that she just seems to think that she can come into and out of people’s lives with nary an explanation. He takes Elizabeth to see her Mom, who is equally flummoxed to see her daughter mysteriously show up and expect to be welcomed back with open arms. Elizabeth throws off some passive-aggression, then splits once again with Tom. I disliked Elizabeth from the start.
Then we’re introduced to Stevie Wayne, who runs her own radio station from a CGI lighthouse on the island. Since she owns her own station she can play whatever she wants (take THAT Clear Channel!). She is told by the weather guy that there’s a fog rolling in. But against the wind? asks Stevie. Oh yes, against the wind. It was runnin’ against the wind. It’s older now, but still runnin’ against the wind.
So the wacky black companion does what wacky black companions invariably do, and takes some chicks out on the fishing boat, the Seagrass, and is videotaping their non-erotic adventures. The fog a comes creeping on leopard’s paws around the boat—we have several fog POV shots—and soon most of them are dead. Now, during this time, Tom stops down at the marina, saying he has to get something off the Seagrass. He goes off, and comes back a few minutes later with the thing… but we all know that the Seagrass was out to sea at that time. Inexplicable… or quite explicable: really careless writing.
Then Tom and Elizabeth drive through town, and suddenly the windows of Toms truck blow out. The only reason for this is that we’ve gone approximately five minutes without something jumping out or exploding of breaking or screaming, and the target audience of this is getting bored. You will be amazed at the level of auto service available on Antonia Island when the very next day, all of the windows in Tom’s truck have been expertly replaced.
So the fog rolls in. The fog is accomplished through a mix of CGI and some serious smoke machines. This was a bit of a problem for me, as FOG is not SMOKE. Fog is mysterious and silent and creepy, while smoke is, well, just smoke. So there’s a lack of atmosphere from the start. But I will say that some of the cinematography in the first half hour was very pretty, what with all the trees and playing lights and everything. I stopped paying attention to it after that.
Blah blah blah so the fog rolls in for one night, then we have a next day where Elizabeth does some research into what’s going on, including a scene where she finds an alcoholic priest siting around drinking by a grave. She wants to talk to him, but he says he’s “Too busy.”
Tom and Elizabeth go out to find the Seagrass, and find the dead bodies, as well as the wacky black companion, who is still alive. Tom steals the video camera and gives it to Elizabeth, who decides that a dank creepy boathouse is probably the best place to watch the tape. She then decides it might be a good idea to walk across this wet, rickety plank, positioned over dark open water, while holding her sensitive AV equipment. Things proceed accordingly.
Around this time I got a little bored and thought I wasn’t going to get much more out of this movie, so I decided to see what else was playing in the multiplex. I thought maybe I could get in and see at least part of Zorro. I wandered all over the multiplex, but nothing looked that appealing. Finally I found a Zorro that wasn’t just ending, but it turns out to have been right at the beginning. As I sat there listening to the faux-Spanish music and then watched some of the “comedy” between Zorro and his horse, I thought “No way can I sit through this. At least in The Fog people are going to die every now and then.” So I went back and watched the rest of The Fog.
Night had fallen, fog had rolled in. From here on the people run around, he people die, etc. Oh, turns out the strange civic society of Antonia Island holds its dedication ceremonies at night, where 8 people show up. At one point there’s a car accident where we see Elizabeth thrown forward against the dashboard of the vehicle, but when we come back a second later she has mysteriously been transported about 50 feet away. She’s FINE, though, of course. Just a little dazed.
Now we start having the mystery revealed. It would seem that the clipper ship we saw at the beginning was headed to Antonia Island and there was some sort of “deal,” but the four guys we saw instead took the treasure and set the ship on fire, killing everyone inside, including usually burning-hot Rade Serbedzija and his wife who—you won’t believe it—looks just like Elizabeth! All of the people on the boat are in need of serious skin care, which makes it seem like they’re lepers, which would justify the others not letting them on the island. And I think I read on some other site that they’re supposed to be lepers… well, it wasn’t clear to me. And if they are lepers, then what’s so wrong with leaving them off the island? I mean, you don’t have to burn them alive and all, but still…
There is a good visual toward the end when a bunch of ghosts fill a graveyard. The ghosts are translucent, and when you start layering them over each other with tombstones around you can end up with a cool visual. And I did sort of like just the sight of a bunch of ghosts… you don’t see straight-ahead translucent GHOSTS in movies very often anymore, and it made this movie somewhat refreshingly old-fashioned.
Anyway then there’s some hugger-mugger with Elizabeth and Rade which makes virtually no sense to me, but whatever, get rid of her anyway. She's bad news. I would certainly dump the wussy Tom for dark, handsome Rade any day, bad skin be damned. It’s soon over after that.
It’s not worth seeing. I was gratified to see that it received almost universal disdain from the citizenry of the IMDb. Interestingly, the director of this film was an actor in the movie Another Country, and directed Stigmata, which I didn’t see, and the music video for MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This!!!!” Now if that’s not a cinematic pedigree, well, I’m not sure I know what is.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you're utterly desperate, you could do worse. If not, steer clear.
