Rolling smoke gathers no moss, but it does break some glass.

The Fog is a remake of the 1980 John Carpenter vehicle of the same name; I’ve never seen the original, so I can’t speak to any similarities or dissimilarities, but I can say this for certain: the movie was very foggy. There was fog, and then there was The Fog. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if it was fog or The Fog I was looking at, but whatever.

The opening is a slightly confusing montage. There’s a large sailing ship ablaze and some men in a rowboat alongside it, watching the ship’s inhabitants leap screaming into the ocean like huge flailing torches. The style of dress (and the fact that there’s a sailing ship) indicates that this is sometime in the past, perhaps the late 18th or 19th Century. A burlap sack drops into the water and sinks to the bottom and some trinkets are shown trickling out – a pocketwatch, a hairbrush, and some weird pacifier/hand drum/enema kit/nose hair plucker thing; I had no idea what it was.

Then it’s present day, and we’re getting a weather report from the local radio DJ who operates out of a lighthouse in Antonio Bay, Oregon. She’s kind enough to tell us that the coastal town is having some kind of anniversary celebration and is unveiling a new Town Square treat – the town has recently erected (hee hee) and dedicated a memorial statue in honor of the four founding fathers, who built (erected?) the town out of nothing within a suspiciously short period of time.

This erection (hee hee) and dedication coincides with the arrival of some very nasty fog that travels against the wind. It’s a thick, heavy, white mist that moves fast, breaks windows, and throws knives. And it’s always accompanied by a very, very, very loud knocking sound. And sometimes by a gigantic sailing ship with silhouettes of people in tophats and cloaks riding along.

The movie was decent, but slow. It had some good scares, and there was kind of a cool setup of clues, but all of the clues were always immediately or concurrently followed by explanations of them. The movie pieced it all together for you. By the middle of the movie I’d figured out what had happened although there were also some questions left unanswered by the script.

The acting was okay; the little boy was actually sort of cute, and knew how to use Scotch tape effectively. There’s also a cool scene where an alcoholic priest gets glass-sharded to death, and the ghosts looming in the Fog with glowing eyes looked fairly kickass – scarier than they did up close. But on the whole, the film was just there. By the time the ghosts started wreaking their havoc I was kind of over it, and I was never sure who to feel sorry for. I didn’t really care much about any of the characters except for Nick’s uncle, a peripheral character who lost his dogs (so sad) and his face (so gross) and his son (a doofus anyway). And at the risk of using sophomoric language, the ending sucked most dumbly.

All in all, I’d give it 6 out of 10 Dead Angry Lepers. Could’ve been better; could’ve been worse. At least I wasn't burned alive.

Despite all the flack that remakes have been getting, you have to admit that some of them have been really good. I personally have enjoyed more than a couple over the past few years. So in spite of my initial dread, I decided to give The Fog a chance hoping that I would really like it... I didn't.

In my opinion, the qualities that made the original such an underrated classic were good storytelling, and atmosphere. The remake is lacking in both areas. It's not like the story in the original was that complex. It was simple but effective. Yet it feels dumbed down in this version. Watch both movies back-to-back and you'll see what I'm talking about.

An amped up budget can buy some very nice special effects, and this movie has plenty, but it can't buy mood or atmosphere. You can never truly appreciate what valuable commodities mood and atmosphere are until you watch a movie that doesn't have them. They do a lot to draw you in. At no point did I feel any kind of connection to the events happening on the screen or the characters. Locus Delicti put it best when she said, "the film was just there."

On the bright side, the special effects were well done. The ghosts did look creepy while cloaked in darkness. And the flaskback scenes were an interesting, albeit unnecessary touch. I had one complaint with the original movie, and that was the random nature of who the fog chose to pursue/kill. The remake corrected this issue somewhat, but it did nothing to affect the overall quality of the movie.

The Fog wasn't horrible, but it definitely falls into the disappointment category. I barely give it 4 out of 10 DJs who were soaking wet in one scene, but miraculously dry in the very next.