Review of "The Fog":
Apr. 17th, 2010 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erinlefey[Public]
No, no, no. Not THAT "The Fog". You must be thinking of the classic from the 1980's. This is the one from 2005, the anti-classic. We watched the "unrated" version on DVD. We're not sure why it was listed as unrated. There was certainly nothing there to indicate any reason for such a rating, unless the rating board simply got bored halfway through the rating process and died right there in the screening room.
Review below, and aye, there be spoilers here! Of course, you don't actually want to see it anyway.
Cue up Remy Zero's 'Somebody Save Me', would you please?
That particular song isn't in the movie, but it might as well be. It's the theme song to the series "Smallville", which is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. It stars Tom Welling as the Superman-to-be, young Clark Kent.
Our main character in "The Fog" was Nick Castle, Tom Welling in one of his first big screen roles. And, poor baby, likely one of his last. Nick Castle is supposed to be a young fishing tour boat captain. All I saw was Clark Kent in a cableknit sweater. I kept expecting Lex Luthor to show up. (It would have helped immeasurably.)
Here's the plot: 100 years ago, a group of 4 men killed a boatload of lepers and stole their gold. The gold was used to build the nifty seaport town of Antonio Island. (Or Antonio Bay. It's not consistent.) Now the ghosts of the lepers are back for revenge. Um...because.
That's really it. There's no real explanation as to why this particular atrocity prompted a set of ghosts to wait 100 years and terrorize the descendants of the people who actually did the bad things to them. First off, as atrocities go, this one wasn't that bad on a global scale. If everything this bad produced a crop of ghosts out for revenge, you couldn't drive down the highway for the ghosts in the way. Second off, Why wait? Most of the people killed had no clue what the hell they were dying FOR. I mean, I know revenge is a dish best served cold, but don't wait until the dish is moldy and people are wondering if it's meat or cake.
Our protagonist has a love triangle of sorts, but no one cares, least of all them. His old girlfriend, helpfully blonde, has come back to town after leaving abruptly 6 months ago. His recent friend-with-benefits, who is helpfully brunette, doesn't seem to mind that the old flame is back. There's a sex scene between Blondie and Clark Kent, but it's seen largely through a frosted shower door, and all you see is Clark kent's chest.
Blondie and Brunette are seen frequently in their undies and tight tank top pajamas. No real reason for it, they do so while at the kitchen sink, sketching and wandering on the beach. They are, of course, immeasurably stupid. When you hear creepy noises outside, go wake up Clark Kent to check it out, don't wander outside in your undies.
Clark Kent, by the way, doesn't seem to do a lot of saving. For the most part, he drives his truck from one end of the island to the other. He's not very good at it. He wrecks the truck at least once, bouncing his passengers off the dashboard in apalling slow motion when he runs into a boat. (No, we don't know why it was on the road. Apparently island people just park their boats wherever.) Amusingly, he breaks all the windows on the truck early in the movie...yet they regenerate in time for a later crash. Awesome.
Anyway, back to our angry ghosts. And they are angry. The first thing they do is kill a dog through super-leprosy. No, we have no clue why they picked on the dog. They give the leprosy to the dog's owner, the dockhand. he grdually gets more leperous (leprosified? leperfied?) over the course of the movie, and no one seems to notice it. No "Hey Bob, don't want to get too personal or anything, but why is the right side of your face fucking disintegrating?
They kill three people on Clark Kent's boat. They leave the plucky African-American protagonist's sidekick character alive on the boat. He's the first mate, and he had borrowed the boat to party with the other three. He and a male friend took two interchangable sexpots on to the boat for a party, and he's got the video camera, woo hoo! He survived by hiding in the freezer. No, really. Apparently ghosts can't get through freezer doors. Keep that in mind.
Clark's boat is lost on the open sea. Clark, upon discovering the boat is missing, for some reason doesn't want the Coast Guard involved in finding the boat. We have no idea why. So he and Blondie go out in a BASS BOAT to find the fishing boat. On the open sea. And somehow...they do. They find the dead people and the African-American-sidekick-sicle, and head into port.
They get ashore, and the local authorities get involved. They aren't handed the camera, because Clark decided it's better that he keep it. Clark is apparently an idiot. You see one of the bits of movie business that most annoys me. You see a corpse loaded into an ambulance. I'm an ex-medic. Ambulances are not for dead people. Everyone is taken to the hopsital. The police think African-american-Sidekick-sicle killed the other three on the boat, so they post guard on his room. Meanwhile, Blondie visits the dead people, who are being stored in a hallway. One gets up and mutters scary things to her. Shrieks ensure, and the rest of the party arrives to find sobbing girl with a corpse at her feet, 25 feet from where he'd been laying. They seem to think she moved him just for giggles. (Friends, moving a dead person is a pain in the ass. Ever heard the term "dead weight"?)
Blondie goes off to see the video. It captured all of the death on the boat, beautifully framed, despite being thrown haphazardly on to the deck. Blondie then falls into the water at a boathouse, destroying the camera. In the process she almost drowns in seaweed, but it's unclear as to whether or not it is Evil Seaweed trying to keep her under, or if she is just a crappy swimmer. Climbing out of the water, she discovers the Old Journal That Explains The Evil Past.
Meanwhile, ghosts are doing scary things. They do graffiti on a crypt. It is a misspelled version of the words written on the wall in the book of Daniel. As that set of words appled to kingly excesses, I don't know WHY they chose to spraypaint this on a wall. Damn delinquent ghosts. They also later short out the power station, and interupt communications and Google searches. Damn. 19th century ghosts are smart.
People are set on fire. People are killed by flying glass. My favorite death was Aunt Connie, who was doing dishes when a leprotic hand reached out of the suds in the sink and
grabbed her hand, giving her super-leprosy which killed her in moments. No more dishes for me!
Things are resolved when Blondie kisses the main leprosified ghost. Yes, as gross as you'd think. Apparently she's the spirit of his wife, killed in the same incident. Why is she a living human and not a ghost? Hell if I know. She becomes a ghost. The ghosts are now happy, they leave. As near as we can tell, only three people remain on the island. Bet they'll have fun explaining that to the Coast Guard.
In our last scene, Clark throws the Old Journal That Explains The Evil Past into the sea. No idea why.
Bad acting, bad script, no logic, continuity errors...Wow. See the OTHER "The Fog". It's clearly better.
No, no, no. Not THAT "The Fog". You must be thinking of the classic from the 1980's. This is the one from 2005, the anti-classic. We watched the "unrated" version on DVD. We're not sure why it was listed as unrated. There was certainly nothing there to indicate any reason for such a rating, unless the rating board simply got bored halfway through the rating process and died right there in the screening room.
Review below, and aye, there be spoilers here! Of course, you don't actually want to see it anyway.
Cue up Remy Zero's 'Somebody Save Me', would you please?
That particular song isn't in the movie, but it might as well be. It's the theme song to the series "Smallville", which is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. It stars Tom Welling as the Superman-to-be, young Clark Kent.
Our main character in "The Fog" was Nick Castle, Tom Welling in one of his first big screen roles. And, poor baby, likely one of his last. Nick Castle is supposed to be a young fishing tour boat captain. All I saw was Clark Kent in a cableknit sweater. I kept expecting Lex Luthor to show up. (It would have helped immeasurably.)
Here's the plot: 100 years ago, a group of 4 men killed a boatload of lepers and stole their gold. The gold was used to build the nifty seaport town of Antonio Island. (Or Antonio Bay. It's not consistent.) Now the ghosts of the lepers are back for revenge. Um...because.
That's really it. There's no real explanation as to why this particular atrocity prompted a set of ghosts to wait 100 years and terrorize the descendants of the people who actually did the bad things to them. First off, as atrocities go, this one wasn't that bad on a global scale. If everything this bad produced a crop of ghosts out for revenge, you couldn't drive down the highway for the ghosts in the way. Second off, Why wait? Most of the people killed had no clue what the hell they were dying FOR. I mean, I know revenge is a dish best served cold, but don't wait until the dish is moldy and people are wondering if it's meat or cake.
Our protagonist has a love triangle of sorts, but no one cares, least of all them. His old girlfriend, helpfully blonde, has come back to town after leaving abruptly 6 months ago. His recent friend-with-benefits, who is helpfully brunette, doesn't seem to mind that the old flame is back. There's a sex scene between Blondie and Clark Kent, but it's seen largely through a frosted shower door, and all you see is Clark kent's chest.
Blondie and Brunette are seen frequently in their undies and tight tank top pajamas. No real reason for it, they do so while at the kitchen sink, sketching and wandering on the beach. They are, of course, immeasurably stupid. When you hear creepy noises outside, go wake up Clark Kent to check it out, don't wander outside in your undies.
Clark Kent, by the way, doesn't seem to do a lot of saving. For the most part, he drives his truck from one end of the island to the other. He's not very good at it. He wrecks the truck at least once, bouncing his passengers off the dashboard in apalling slow motion when he runs into a boat. (No, we don't know why it was on the road. Apparently island people just park their boats wherever.) Amusingly, he breaks all the windows on the truck early in the movie...yet they regenerate in time for a later crash. Awesome.
Anyway, back to our angry ghosts. And they are angry. The first thing they do is kill a dog through super-leprosy. No, we have no clue why they picked on the dog. They give the leprosy to the dog's owner, the dockhand. he grdually gets more leperous (leprosified? leperfied?) over the course of the movie, and no one seems to notice it. No "Hey Bob, don't want to get too personal or anything, but why is the right side of your face fucking disintegrating?
They kill three people on Clark Kent's boat. They leave the plucky African-American protagonist's sidekick character alive on the boat. He's the first mate, and he had borrowed the boat to party with the other three. He and a male friend took two interchangable sexpots on to the boat for a party, and he's got the video camera, woo hoo! He survived by hiding in the freezer. No, really. Apparently ghosts can't get through freezer doors. Keep that in mind.
Clark's boat is lost on the open sea. Clark, upon discovering the boat is missing, for some reason doesn't want the Coast Guard involved in finding the boat. We have no idea why. So he and Blondie go out in a BASS BOAT to find the fishing boat. On the open sea. And somehow...they do. They find the dead people and the African-American-sidekick-sicle, and head into port.
They get ashore, and the local authorities get involved. They aren't handed the camera, because Clark decided it's better that he keep it. Clark is apparently an idiot. You see one of the bits of movie business that most annoys me. You see a corpse loaded into an ambulance. I'm an ex-medic. Ambulances are not for dead people. Everyone is taken to the hopsital. The police think African-american-Sidekick-sicle killed the other three on the boat, so they post guard on his room. Meanwhile, Blondie visits the dead people, who are being stored in a hallway. One gets up and mutters scary things to her. Shrieks ensure, and the rest of the party arrives to find sobbing girl with a corpse at her feet, 25 feet from where he'd been laying. They seem to think she moved him just for giggles. (Friends, moving a dead person is a pain in the ass. Ever heard the term "dead weight"?)
Blondie goes off to see the video. It captured all of the death on the boat, beautifully framed, despite being thrown haphazardly on to the deck. Blondie then falls into the water at a boathouse, destroying the camera. In the process she almost drowns in seaweed, but it's unclear as to whether or not it is Evil Seaweed trying to keep her under, or if she is just a crappy swimmer. Climbing out of the water, she discovers the Old Journal That Explains The Evil Past.
Meanwhile, ghosts are doing scary things. They do graffiti on a crypt. It is a misspelled version of the words written on the wall in the book of Daniel. As that set of words appled to kingly excesses, I don't know WHY they chose to spraypaint this on a wall. Damn delinquent ghosts. They also later short out the power station, and interupt communications and Google searches. Damn. 19th century ghosts are smart.
People are set on fire. People are killed by flying glass. My favorite death was Aunt Connie, who was doing dishes when a leprotic hand reached out of the suds in the sink and
grabbed her hand, giving her super-leprosy which killed her in moments. No more dishes for me!
Things are resolved when Blondie kisses the main leprosified ghost. Yes, as gross as you'd think. Apparently she's the spirit of his wife, killed in the same incident. Why is she a living human and not a ghost? Hell if I know. She becomes a ghost. The ghosts are now happy, they leave. As near as we can tell, only three people remain on the island. Bet they'll have fun explaining that to the Coast Guard.
In our last scene, Clark throws the Old Journal That Explains The Evil Past into the sea. No idea why.
Bad acting, bad script, no logic, continuity errors...Wow. See the OTHER "The Fog". It's clearly better.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-04-17 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-17 02:53 pm (UTC)I, as a general rule, don't mind watching B-movies. Sometimes I actually like them a lot. Bad horror is usually still worth watching at least once.
But this?? Was one of those rare, true total wastes of time. I paid $2 for this and it was too much.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-17 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-17 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-17 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 04:55 pm (UTC)Given that one of his other movies was the sequel to "Cheaper by the Dozen" (i.e., Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt trying to save their failing comedy careers), you're probably right.