The term "remake" will set most movie fans to cringe. Sometimes they work but most times they fail to catch what made the original movies so good to begin with. The only thing worse than a remake of an established classic though is remakes of mediocre flicks and downright crap cinema that should never have been made in the first place. As such, here we get an example of the former with the 2005 remake of John Carpenter's The Fog, the original of which is one title that Carpenter himself has said he'd rather leave off of his resume because even he wasn't impressed with it. Is that a sign of modesty from the horror icon, or just further proof that the movie was fucking weak? You decide.
Since this is a remake of a movie I've already reviewed, I don't need to weigh down what's supposed to be a short review by going into every detail about the story. It's pretty much the same shit as before, only with a younger cast to appeal to the kiddies, and a few tweaks here and there to try and get rid of all the kinks like ghost lepers who can't open doors and have a baffling need to cash in on the lack of gold in Hell. Nick (Mr. "Smallville", Tom Welling) now uses his fishing trawler to host tourists, and he's accompanied by his wisecracking token black friend and first mate Spooner (DeRay "Not to be confused with Ice Cube" Davis). Nick's also now "dating" (i.e. boning) the sassy Miss Stevie Wayne (Selma "Hellboy" Blair), but that doesn't stop him from picking up his old girlfriend Elisabeth and doing a little deep sea diving in her trench when the little lady returns from New York to their hometown of Antonio Bay (or Antonio Island depending on who you're asking for directions) following a string of nightmares that have driven her back to the place of her birth.
As far as the killer zombie leper pirate ghosts go, theirs deaths are no longer the product of navigational manipulation by the six treacherous conspirators, but the result of a flat out attack on their ship by the now four conspirators, who rob the sickies and set fire to their craft far offshore, leaving the infirmed men, women and children to burn or drown, whichever they opted for. The ancestors of those four conspirators are of course Nick and Stevie, as well as the town's mayor and their preacher, Father Malone. Liz isn't a relation to the conspirators, but she is now the daughter of the head of the town historical committee, Kathy, played by Psycho's Janet Leigh in the original trip through Antonio. Some people would prefer this "connecting the cast members through some kind of nightmarish fate" approach, some prefer the original's "they're all just in the wrong place at the wrong time" version. On the plus side, this at least gives the lepers a reason to be stalking the main characters this time, in a "blood for blood" type of revenge, but at the same time the ghouls are still indiscriminately killing whatever other people they come across in the movie, so the whole ancestral thing just comes off as unnecessary and standard cheesy spook movie fare. Me, not so much, but I don't entirely hate it.
The lepers are less zombie slashers now and more phantasmal in nature, less materializing from the fog and much more a part of it. They move objects and people like poltergeists, they dissipate when struck by cars, and their foggy transportation definitely benefits from the leaps and bounds made in special effects tech over the quarter century since the original. We even get to see their ghostly doom ship this time too and the fog itself is used in a very realistic manner: to cause car wrecks.
Story wise and cast wise there are some elements that didn't need to be changed, like the discovery of the priest's grandfather's journal (found now in a boathouse thanks to an annoying coincidental scene with Liz), the transformation of Father Malone from a kindly old man who uncovers his family's dark secret to a middle-age drunk doomsayer who seems to know more than he's telling, the inclusion of the Spooner character who's just there to survive an attack so he can be the scapegoat for the resultant murders, and Liz's bad movie cliché cheesy prophetic nightmares. Also, what the fuck was the point in keeping the dates from the original movie (the town was founded in 1880) and then keeping the town's centennial celebration angle when the movie's taking place 24 years after the fact?! Was it just lazy-ass writing that nobody bothered to take note of, or just a sinister plot by the writer to make people hate their movie?!And what's with the fucking ending!? As is deus ex machina finales aren't irritating enough, this one left out one very important little tidbit: one of the cast member is really one of the lepers reincarnated (oops, sorry, SPOILER ALERT!) and once said cast member returns to their flock, everything is hunky dandy. Beyond the obvious annoyance of "then why were they fucking killing everybody else then?!", why is it that only one of the lepers was apparently allowed to rest and be reincarnated while the rest are doomed to sit in a waiting room in limbo for 124 years before eventually just heading back to the land of the living to kill people!? What the living fuck is that all about!? ARGH!
Despite the new plot holes big enough to steer the good ship Leper-Pop through, there's still some stuff in the movie that managed to not suck. On the improvement end of things, for those who didn't see the original, the whole story of the lepers is no longer spelled out to us by an opening monologue, but is revealed in pieces over the course of the movie with at least some flare of mystery. Also, when Stevie's son is in danger, she doesn't just sit at the radio station, she attempts to run home and save his ass herself. The violence is a bit more intense (including a graphic scene of a man burned alive) and it's cool to see that the ghosts aren't just hacking people to death with weapons, they're being more supernatural with their murders, including something that I felt they should've used in the first place: giving a woman super leprosy and rotting the meat right off her body. The scale of the attack also extends to the rest of the town too, not just hanging around the lighthouse, Stevie's home, and the church. On the downside though, there's still no explanation as to why the creepers wait a century (well, 134 years anyway) to exact their revenge. Oh yeah, and even though they're still able to become solid enough to grab people and break shit and they finally learn how to use doorknobs, they can't quite figure their way around how to open a freezer that Spooner hides in? And why do they keep knocking on doors when they can just open them or melt underneath them in the fog? Because banging noises are scary? The only time banging noises are scary is when it's coming from the crack house next door, or from your parents’ bedroom.
Ghost stories have definitely benefited from the computer generated special effects boom, as the spooks in question can now be done in a manner that makes them more attuned to what we've always been told they should be like. As far as The Fog remake goes, I liked it better than the original in that the creators go further with the concept of the ghosts and their power and they do more with it thanks to modern technology, but I was pissed that the prior story screw-ups were patched up, only to make way for a new batch of stupidity cookies. It also still tends to meander in parts like its predecessor seemed to enjoy doing, but not quite so bad. The fact that it's another 15 minutes or so longer doesn't help that though. Overall it's an okay flick beyond the massive inconsistencies in the script, but I don't feel the need to watch it ever again.
