The Fog (2005)
Residents on a small island off the coast of Oregon find their Founders' Day celebration to be a troubled event when an eerie fog rolls in with some old-timey zombie ghosts. John Carpenter's original version of THE FOG is a very good spooky affair, delivering some effective scares, high-caliber performances, and excellent use of overwhelming dread. This ill-advised remake instead negates all of that in order to present a shambling, incoherent work of unintentional laughs and sheer stupidity. It spends more time on an easy-to-solve mystery, including a head-slapping final twist, than it does on actual characterization or any frights beyond pathetically engineered jump scares. Stars Tom Welling and Maggie Grace are blank pretty people and only shine in front of the camera when they are shirtless or in the undergarments respectively. Selma Blair, on the other hand, is clearly embarrassed throughout the picture, sulking in every shot and nowhere nearly able to match Adrienne Barbeau's stellar performance in the original. The plot is filled with dropped subplots and plot holes galore, especially whenever the makers bring in the villainous ghosts; these late 19th century beings haunt the town by literally tagging graves with spray cans, stenciling out markings out of kids' drawings, disrupting computers with their hacking skills, and messing around with radio equipment. One minute they have pyromancy, the next it's telepathy, then they rot away flesh, following that up with a dinosaur scream sound effect, etc. These numbskulls even just kill random people for no explainable reason before the climax when they suddenly realize oh yeah, we wanted to go after some descendants. And finally, how can you take anything in here serious when the titled phenomenon is colored green, making it look like a wave of poo gas is invading from the ocean. This terrible remake has already dissipated from cultural memory and you are better off for it.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
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