The characters in John Carpenter's post-"Halloween" outing, "The Fog," defy the bounds of logic and common sense with such disturbing regularity that one can't help but guffaw at their eventual fates. I say, if you're dumb enough to answer the door when when a spooky, glowing, supernatural-looking fog surrounds you on all sides, you DESERVE that impalement. While the Poe-inspired story of "The Fog" is intriguing, and there are some atmospheric jump-scares, the excellent cast (including Carpenter familiars Nancy Loomis, Charles Cyphers, Tom Atkins, Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis; plus screen veterans Hal Holbrook, John Houseman, and Janet Leigh) is in service to some of the most blandly-written stock characters in film history; this would be less of a problem if Carpenter made us jump with more regularity, but he doesn't. The director's craft for building suspense (as evidenced in the overrated "Halloween") is curiously absent here--I kept thinking all the elements were in place for a scary good time, but not once did I feel a sense of consequential, tangible fear. Like the titular phenomenon, "The Fog" should have been a swallow-you-whole terror ride instead of the flat, indifferent production it wound up being. (Seasoned horror vets will notice references to Howard Hawks' "The Thing," plus several genre character-name homages during the closing credits.)
Review of The Fog
