John Carpenter’s 1980 original is a broody, insidious little chiller, a nautical ghost story with flashes of slasher and some cold scares ordered slow and certain. Presumably the cashflow ain’t what it used to be, because, 16 years on, Carpenter’s capped a producer credit on his own remake. Some day, this’ll come back to haunt him.
Happily, director Rupert Wainwright appears to have calmed down since the hilariously over-directed Stigmata. Unhappily, he still doesn’t appear to have graduated from Horror Elementary. Prepare yourself, then, for a flatpack horror so predictably assembled it stands up for half an hour then crumples the moment the dreaded dry ice descends on a boat of partying bimbos. Clearly, with ancient curses come even more ancient clichés.
The Fog rolls around like Scream never happened. Not necessarily a problem — hokey can often be a teen horror’s saving grace. But other than a granny getting vaporised over the washing up, it’s not even fun. Wainwright’s way too interested in the next visual to help out his small-screen leads, rendered helpless, aimless but most of all gormless against the slick, bland blitz of computerised ghosts and phoney loud jumps. DVD limbo beckons...