Credit: Amazon.com
Directed by
Rupert Wainwright
Cast:
Tom Welling …. Nick Castle
Maggie Grace …. Elizabeth Williams
Selma Blair …. Stevie Wayne
DeRay Davis …. Spooner
Kenneth Welsh …. Tom Malone
Adrian Hough …. Father Malone
Sara Botsford …. Kathy Williams
Cole Heppell …. Andy Wayne
Mary Black …. Aunt Connie
Jonathon Young …. Dan The Weatherman
The Movie:
Remakes of Horror films have been big business for decades now, but in the last few years Hollywood has stepped it up a notch with its output. Since the later 90’s we’ve had The Haunting, House on Haunted Hill, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, Pulse, The Amityville Horror, Psycho, Thirteen Ghosts , House of Wax, and probably many others. A few of these, such as The Ring and Dawn of the Dead are at least entertaining films, while most of this list is complete garbage.
Rupert Wainwright’s The Fog is slightly in both categories, but unfortunately leans mostly towards the latter. First of all, while this is a phrase often use associated with Horror film remakes, this is a film that probably should not have been made. This isn’t to say that the film isn’t entertaining, because it is at times, but the source material isn’t the same caliber as many of the other remakes have been in recent years. John Carpenter’s The Fog has somehow reached Classic status despite only being a good, but not great Horror film. Carpenter has even admitted that the film is not one of his favorites.
The plot for this film is nearly exactly the same as its predecessor. A small coastal community named Antonio Bay is celebrating its centennial by erecting a statue to its founding fathers. On that same week, a mysterious fog rolls into town bringing ghost/zombie pirates with it. It turns out; these founders weren’t as nice as history made them out to be, and these ghosts show up to take revenge for these men’s misdeeds.
The updates from the original go about half and half as far as their quality. Most of the same characters return with Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, and Selma Blair taking over the roles of Nick Castle, Elizabeth, and late night D.J. Stevie Wayne. Each gives a decent performance, but by casting the film so young, the film loses a certain amount of credibility that the original invoked by having actors like Janet Leigh, Hal Holbrook, and Adrienne Barbeau. Welling especially seems a bit miscast, as Nick is supposed to be an experienced seaman, but the actor doesn’t exactly come off as grizzled. He is charismatic and is fine when playing the Boy Scout, but its just hard to bye his character at times.
The worst part about the film is that the film makers seemed to purposely try to skew it to a teenage audience. The Fog’s first victims in the original were fisherman, out there trying to make a living. This version has replaced that sequences with partiers, complete with scantily clad women who fall prey to Antonio Bay’s vengeful ghosts. One of Carpenter’s version’s main strengths is that it’s kind of a classy ghost tale. It’s too bad that Director Rupert Wainwright and Screenwriter Cooper Layne decided they had to dumb the picture down to try and appeal to youngsters. In fact, even Elizabeth and Stevie, who are the strongest of the film’s characters, seem to spend quite a bit of time in their underwear.
The CGI Fog looks more impressive than the original’s visual effects, but isn’t as atmospheric. The pirates are much more ethereal this time out, but not nearly as imposing. Carpenter knew what to do with what little budget he had, where as Wainwright doesn’t believe in leaving much to the imagination. For all his pandering to the hip crowd, the scenes attempting to scare you just end up felling very muted. Perhaps a little more gore and a little less CGI would have gone a long way.
Where the film is stronger than its predecessor is that its script does seem to make a bit more sense as far as the plot goes. The founders of Antonio Bay have their crime shown in full, as opposed to Carpenter’s technique of just eluding to it. Also the motivations of the ghosts are much better thought out this time around.
In the end Classic status should be reserved for neither version of The Fog. This one is mildly entertaining, but isn’t what could be called a good movie either. This film a lot of potential to build on the ideas that really worked from the original, but instead just became another tired retread.
Score: 4.5/10
The DVD:
The Video
For all the movie’s fault, the disc does have a great print. The movie looks vibrant and colors never appear to be saturated. The film is presented in an Anamorphic Widescreen with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1.
The Audio
The sound here is also decent. The track is in Dolby Digital 5.1 and sounds just great whether you want to hear the lame dialogue or not.
SPECIAL FEATURES:3 Featurettes, Audio commentary, Deleted Scenes
Whiteout Conditions: The Remake of a Horror Classic – This featurette runs about 6 minutes and covers how the idea for the remake came about. John Carpenter actually gets plenty of screen time here, but basically just admits that the remake was made to make more money. Wainwright does admit that Carpenter was very hands off with the project and let him go his own way. Too bad that happened.
Seeing Through the Fog – The Featurette goes 10 minutes and covers the production of the film. Screenwriter Cooper Layne talks about how many layers and changes to the original they had to add in each draft of the script. The best part of the mini doc had Rupert Wainwright talking about Tom Welling’s dedication to the project. Apparently the actor was still working on his series, Smallville, during the first 5 weeks of shooting The Fog. The actor would pull double duty as he would finish his night shoots then drive to the Smallville set.
Feeling the Effects of the Fog – This is the longest of the Featurettes as film makers cover both the Fog and makeup effects for the pirates and lepers in the film. The most interesting of the effect is how they tried different technique for making the fog do different things.
Audio commentary with Director Rupert Wainwright – Wainwright seems to think he’s making the next Ringu here, but shows an uncanny ability to not really know his own source material well enough. The director also isn’t very chatty through a lot of the track so expect a lot of dead spots.
Deleted Scenes – There are seven deleted scenes, but nothing here of real note. One actually furthers the relationship of Elizabeth and her estranged mother, but other than that each of these scenes were cut for good reason.
Score: 5.0/10
