While viewing “The Fog,” several thoughts ran through my mind, including wondering why the people behind this re-make of John Carpenter’s original 1980 movie would want to redo this film. On a positive note, Tom Welling, the lead actor in the “Smallville” TV series, does show he can play a lead role in a film. It is just too bad he had this material to work with. Otherwise, this film offers nothing worthwhile other than an eerie atmosphere and occasionally good cinematography. It is laden with profanity and death, and what little mystery which remains till the end, is mostly gone upfront. The corpses start piling up not far into the movie and continues rather steadily until the end. The only fog in this movie is not so much the mystery of whether or not people will die, but rather a Niagara of literal fog which always brings bad news and death with it.
The setting is on a northern California Island, and due to betrayal and murder which occurred some 100 years previously, some unrested ghosts exact their revenge on the descendants of the modern town. Or so it would seem. The ending, without giving it all away, included a major character turning into a ghost. It left one wondering exactly what had just happened. The film ends while leaving the audience wondering if this character was a ghost all along, or made that way by her long-lost love. It is not clearly resolved and as a result the film’s title might be one of the best things about the movie. There are many unanswered questions which keeps alive a little mystery. Were the ghosts taking revenge on the people, or simply trying to locate a long lost love? Little matter. With ghosts aplenty and a dead corpse rising in this film, this is obviously not a family film. The expletives abound in this movie and there is some sexuality, the most of which is a scene between the two leads who take a shower together. There is no nudity but there is little question about what is taking place in the shower. Other female characters in the film are scantily dressed on occasion. As this film has received poor ratings on the Internet and in newspapers, perhaps more people are in less of a fog than Hollywood would think.
