So Halloween Week this year is going to be six reviews instead of eight, me and my family went out for the weekend for some family time and shopping, and on top of not having the time and the hotel not having internet, I just wanted to spend that time with my family. I'm back home now though and with Halloween so, so close, there's only one thing to do, get spooky.
The film opens with, of all things, a line from an Edgar Allen Poe poem, and I've read the poem a few times now, trying figure out why it opens this film, but I'm not huge into poetry, so I'm still working on it. But with the film's story in mind, maybe the poem refers to our inability to prevent death, with life being the golden sand and death being the pitiless wave, death embodied in this film by vengeful ghosts, told you I'm not into poetry, now I'm going to stop before I hurt myself. Things kick off though with a spooky story told around a campfire, which is just perfect. The legend of the Elizabeth Dane and her crew's fate serves as our jumping off point for the film's events, with the old man telling the tale of a ghostly fog and a sunken ship, one who's crew await the day they can find the camp fire that led them to their deaths. It's quite a poetic intro in and of itself, framing the events of the film within a classic campfire tale, where truth has been distorted to maintain a legacy. If you're hoping for a slightly faster paced horror movie, The Fog will not be your friend, because it really, really takes its time. As spooky events occur around the town, we are introduced to our heroes, with the film opting for an ensemble cast rather than any central protagonist. Jamie Lee Curtis is in this film as a hitchhiker that falls in love with Antonio Bay local Nick surprisingly fast, not that I fault either of them, we are talking about Jamie Lee Curtis in her 20's. After those two, we have the town's radio DJ, the smooth voiced Stevie Wayne, and Father Malone, the town's priest and the first person to figure out what's going on.
The film doesn't take the piss that much though, giving us our first taste of its antagonist around the twenty-minute mark, introducing us to the revenants; the murderous, undead crew of the sunken Clipper as they silently slaughter the crew of the trawler. Now if you're a horror normie who thinks horror is gore and jumpscares, you know, like my brother, The Fog will not be your friend either, because it's a film that relies far more on its atmosphere to be scary, which makes it more my kind of horror. Take the trawler scene for example, a scene that builds the dread as the fog slowly surrounds the boat, literally creeping into its engine and cabin, and the silent ruthlessness of the ghosts is a very strange thing to describe. There's a constant feeling of danger every time the fog shows up, and that's naturally down to the ghosts, a group of lepers who move silently and kill you quickly and painfully, and who can hide right in front of you behind the titular fog. there's an inescapability to them that makes them so effective as villains, with the fog seeping under doors and eroding the environment around it, figuratively choking our heroes as it closes in around them, the revenants never far behind. But after that initial encounter with the ghosts, the film slows back down, giving us more time with its characters as they carry on towards their respective goals. It's at this point that the film also digs into the tale of the Elizabeth Dane, exposing the horror of the tale as the true fate of the ship and her crew is revealed. And like a lot of good horror films, it gets dark, with you seeing the villains more as victims by the end, and a lingering sense of injustice over not just them, but our surviving heroes as well, who have inherited the guilt of their ancestors, cursed through no fault of their own.
Where The Fog gets a lot of its effectiveness is that lull though, giving us time to get to know our characters and get attached to them, attached enough that the dread is palpable, even with the film's complete lack of any real gore and habit of hiding its kills behind the fog. I find this brand of horror far more effective than the normie brand, because while the normie brand can be scary in the moment, it doesn't stay with you or give you the chills, but this does. It's a film that makes the weather a fearsome and unstoppable force of evil, and there's just something really unnerving about the revenants who, without us ever getting a really good look or even making a sound, become an intimidating threat. As the film goes on, it only manages to pull us deeper into its characters, the radio DJ in particular, who stays at her post to warn the townsfolk of the danger in the fog, even as it comes literally knocking at her door and threatens to kill her son. It's all in this film's final thirty minutes where the shit goes down, when the fog comes ashore and starts hunting our characters, with the highlight once again going to the radio DJ and her final stand in the light house as the fog closes in on all sides, with the same fate looming over the rest of our heroes at the church. Once again, The Fog is much more about building atmosphere than hitting you with scares; it's all about the dread as the ghosts inch closer and closer to their victims. Then it ends, and the film's final moments is actually one of my favourite things about it. Like any good campfire horror story, there's an ambiguity to its conclusion, a feeling of unfinished business that'll be hanging in your mind as John Carpenter's excellent soundtrack plays over the credits and rounds out the story in a very poetic way, if we're still looking at it as a classic ghost story, which it undeniably is.
Now What Kind of Fog Blows Against the Wind
The Fog is my kind of horror story; playing out less like your average horror movie and more like a timeless campfire story of ghosts, revenge, and an evil that lurks in plain sight in something has harmless as a cloud of fog. The fog is a threat our heroes cannot fight or run from, it's merely a vessel of vengeance that they have unjustly become the victims of. It's probably not an easy film to sell if I'm honest, it's one of those horror films that horror normies would find really boring, but there is a spookiness and a dread about this film, and that's something I really appreciate about horror films. Like Halloween before it and The Thing after, The Fog is a perfect little Halloween movie, and like Halloween, it's probably going to become another annual ritual for me to watch this film, and hopefully scare my nephews with it, and it's definitely worth watching.
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