I really wish I had caught THE FOG remake in theaters. That way, I could’ve included it on my worst of 2005 list. Oh, boys and girls, does this movie suck.

From the very beginning, as Selma Blair’s lighthouse DJ blares Fall Out Boy, it’s painfully obvious that the filmmakers are going all out to hip this up. This entails casting the so-bland-he’s-invisible Tom Welling as the hero and LOST’s Maggie Grace as his love interest. She may have won the role because she’s cute, but here she reveals herself as incapable of acting. Of course, despite a lack of previous experience in battling demon fog, they’re the ones who are going to save the town from the murderous mist that’s moving against the wind toward their coastal Oregon town.

Like Raid, the fog kills upon contact. First we see it fry a dog, and then it moves on to annoying, expendable supporting cast members, like those way-cool young people having a “Booty on the Boat” party. I have to say I rooted for the fog, even if it’s so one-note and predictable by breaking a lot of glass. No pane survives that dareth crosseth its path. Except your TV screen, dammit.

THE FOG succeeds mightily on one aspect: Reminding me how good the John Carpenter original was. In every way that film was effective, this is not. For example: the 1980 FOG creepily whipped up man-made fog, but the remake – which actually had to shut down production when real fog plagued the set – seems content to let CGI do all the work. As a result, it looks terribly fake, which immediately destroys the terror factor. The ending is laughably bad, not that you’ll have the patience to reach it.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 27th, 2006 at 9:55 am and is filed under DVD Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.