A fantastic first act is followed by a slow, somewhat mediocre second and a frenzied but rushed third, ultimately making for a flawed film that has moments of pure, albeit slightly campy, spooky joy but also feels lacking from a story perspective. While the flick generally demonstrates Carpenter's impressively assured, genre-confident direction, it occasionally seems somewhat hollow and is just generally a bit too straightforward - at least, for its pacing and structure. The story issues aren't helped by an enigmatic but ultimately superfluous opening scene that essentially spells out everything that's going to happen and thus reduces a lot of potential mystery. There are also several false, though thankfully always grounded, jump-scares that end up becoming quite grating. Plus, a final scare comes out of nowhere and doesn't really make all that much sense. Still, the suspenseful stuff is usually successful and there's a great sense of atmosphere - especially in the feature's opening third, as I mentioned. There are a number of well-crafted frights and, on the whole, it makes good, if sparing, use of horror (including some inventive, though slightly tame, horrific imagery). When it's at its best, the picture makes you forget about its flaws, including its rushed relationships and generally weak characters, by being a confident 'haunted house', a ghost story told to entertain rather than straight-up scare. 6/10
Review of The Fog
