It seems director Rupert Wainwright couldn't see through the haze when remaking "The Fog." The ominous cloud of John Carpenter's 1980 film still hasn't lifted, causing the remake to be weak and unnecessary.
A hundred years after a murder scandal upon a leprosy-stricken ship, ghosts come to haunt and kill anyone in their midst in a small island town. Their main goal is to torture anyone of the same lineage of their murderers.
The storyline works with a Carpenter-esque foundation. The rest of the essential tools such as subtlety, nudity and a balance of preposterousness and believability are not included.
Instead of naming the film "The Fog," the movie should have been titled "The Stretch." It turned what was supposed to be a horror film into an unintentional laugh-out-loud comedy.
The few murders that occurred took place out of pure stupidity. Dan the Weatherman, alone in the weather station, walks outside to answer the incessant knocking on his door. It is not a big surprise when the person knocking happens to be the source of the murders, and the weatherman goes up in flames.
While Freddy can attack us through dreams, and Jason can interrupt cabin sex, these ghosts can spread leprosy. At one point the ghosts wail from inside the garbage disposal, apparently spreading leprosy through kitchen sinks.
A scary movie should have a balance between believability and fantasy. In many cases, the movie falls into the latter.
The radio DJ of the town, Stevie, (Selma Blair of "Cruel Intentions") wises up and decides to head home. On the way, a tractor-trailer hits her car, pushing her off the road and down a ravine into the water. Stevie is knocked unconscious but awakens to find herself underwater with a ghost at her window. She proceeds to escape her car, climb up the ravine and run into town with only a few cuts on her face.
Stretch Armstrong.
The tactic is overused, with the source of every jump and shriek from the audience based on a character's predictable mistakes. Of course, the premise for the perfect second-rate scary movie is being too curious for your own good during a killing spree.
Before the town has witnessed any murders, Elizabeth (Maggie Grace of ABC's "Lost") decides to go outside in her underwear after noticing some strange wet footprints on the ceiling.
Sadly, evolution hasn't weeded out those of such stupidity just yet.
Elizabeth does come close to death, however, when she miraculously falls in the water and almost drowns. Somehow she holds her breath for about ten minutes and proceeds to rescue herself from the water's murky depth. She begins to climb up a wall where the rocks come loose and finds a clue to the murders.
Wainwright's nose for subtlety seems to have been lost at sea. Anyone involved in a mystical murder would not be as nosy as Elizabeth.
After the first murders, which occur on a boat, Elizabeth and her boyfriend Nick (Tom Welling of WB's "Smallville") visit the lone survivor who was found in the freezer on the boat because, "the fog can't get me in here." Elizabeth decides to wander freely amongst the dead bodies of her friends and lift their sheets.
The mix of the character's stupidity and the director's lame excuses for scare tactics make for a terrible movie. Second-rate television actors, second-rate direction and a complete lack of creativity only add to the mess.
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
