The 2005 remake of John Carpenter’s horror classic, The Fog, has long had a rather infamous reputation on the internet as a bad movie. With currently a less than 5% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes, 3.7 stars on IMDB, and a 27 Metascore, I have to say that I think those values have gone up a little bit since the last time I looked—maybe people are starting to come around. Admittedly, the low scores were part of the reason I never watched it until recently, assuming that it was somehow on par with something like Birdemic or Troll 2. Having finally taken the plunge in a night that unintentionally brought about a bad horror movie marathon, I can safely say it’s not that bad. But it’s definitely not good.

What is it?

I feel it necessary to not only go over the plot of both films but also bring up some spoilers to at least make a few points about this movie. The remake is almost 20 years old, so I’m not too concerned about spoiling anything, but if you care, I recommend just watching the original before reading on.

The plot of the original film from 1980 and the 2005 remake are relatively similar with some particular changes focused on certain plot points that somewhat drastically change the nature of the events, which we’ll get to. A small town on the West Coast of the United States seems like a perfectly ordinary town with your typical history of settlers coming out west and trying to make an ideal community. There’s nothing particularly interesting about the town itself. It has a lot of ocean fishing. Tourism is a big part of its economy. There’s also a radio DJ that broadcasts from the nearby lighthouse. The only thing that seems to stand out of recent note is the arrival of some thick fog in which people seem to disappear or die.

The fog only rolls in over the open water and beaches the first couple of nights, but it eventually comes all the way into town and completely envelops everything. Normally you wouldn’t care about thick fog unless you were driving, but this fog seems sentient. It’s almost trying to creep its way into your house. That being said, it’s not actually the fog that’s the threat. It’s what is lurking within the fog.

What Makes it Stand Out?

-Editor’s note, ignore everything I say about pirates, because I’m incorrect, as Greyson correctly pointed out in his comment at the bottom.

What lurks in the fog is where the plots of the two movies diverge a little, which causes the remake to become overly complicated in comparison. The fog is the result of a curse placed on the town by people who were wronged by the original founders of the village. That much is the same. Where they differ is in who was wronged. In the original, it was a group of pirates whose treasure was stolen to fund the establishment of the town. In the remake, the people who were wronged were a community of lepers who were looking for an isolated piece of land to settle. In both instances, the founding fathers of the town stole the treasure and murdered its owners, ensuring a curse be placed on their village. Now that little change doesn’t seem like a big deal at first. The curse is still the same in that a fog will come to town, bringing the ghosts of the dead who will then kill any unfortunate fool caught in the fog’s path. This creates a few minor issues throughout the film and ultimately comes to a head with its ending.

In the original, the curse is lifted at the last minute by finding the last pieces of pirate treasure and giving it to the ghosts. The ghosts have already killed a number of people at this point and take a few more on their way out, but it’s a relatively simple solution to a simple plot. In the remake, the goal of the ghosts is not to reclaim the treasure, it’s just to kill anyone in their way especially those who are descendants of the town’s founders. This happens to include the main characters. So you would assume that lifting the curse would more difficult when it comes to keeping our protagonists alive.

After a few descendants have been murdered, the female protagonist Elizabeth Williams (Maggie Grace) approaches the ghosts in the graveyard. Elizabeth is supposedly a descendant herself who grew up in the town until she left for college to partly get away from her mother. She happened to return on the eve of the fog’s arrival and seemed to be connected to the events in some way. Well, the remake throws a bit of a curveball twist out of nowhere when the lead ghost walks up to her and kisses her, which transforms her and reveals her to be the lover of the leper leader from the past. So she’s a ghost too? Well, love conquers all I guess, because the curse is immediately lifted, the fog dissipates, and she disappears with the other ghosts after an undead makeout session. Too bad she wasn’t kissed a few minutes earlier, otherwise her mom might have lived.

It’s a perplexing twist that really doesn’t make any sense. I don’t recall any instance in which it’s mentioned that Elizabeth was adopted to perhaps justify why she was somehow a descendant but also a ghost. Since the character’s past indicates that she grew up in the town, dated the protagonist Nick Castle (Tom Welling), and is recognized by other people in the area, it just creates a whole bunch of questions. Why did the curse wait for her to leave and come back? How can she be both a ghost and a person who grew up in the town and is part of the bloodline that wronged the ghosts in the first place? If the curse was only for revenge and nothing else, why is it resolved by kissing a girl who should be cursed herself? Nick Castle is a descendant too, but nothing happens to him. Why kill all the other people in the town and not him just because the head ghost got to be reunited with his lost love that we didn’t realize was lost?

Had it just kept things simple, and reused the pirate backstory this twist and these questions wouldn’t have happened. We know pirates killed people mercilessly, especially when seeking treasure. So the fact that they killed innocent people in addition to the descendants doesn’t spark any questions. There also wouldn’t be a ghost girl who’s also a member of the elite families of the town to complicate things. I’m not sure what they were thinking with this change as it certainly made me extremely confused by the end. However, it’s not the only reason the remake of The Fog is bad.

Why is it so Reviled?

As I said at the top, the remake of The Fog is not unwatchable. However, in addition to the nonsensical plot and twist, there are a number of other questionable things that occur in the film. For one thing, there are several side characters who serve little purpose. Sometimes, that purpose is not particularly useful in moving the plot along. Sometimes, that purpose is only to be fodder for the ghosts. Sometimes, you could argue there is no clear reason for the character to exist. Regardless of their purpose, most of these side characters act in rather bizarre ways. Maybe there were some scenes missing in which they were supposed to be introduced better or there was some dialogue we hadn’t heard. I’m not sure. Whether that is the case or not, these side characters are entirely disposable and barely come across as human.

One of whom is the grungy old fellow with the metal detector who acts as one of the several harbingers of doom. He approaches Elisabeth and hands her a watch he found, telling her that everything will change when she touches it. Why he knows this, who he is, and what role he plays in the town other than being the creepy guy with the metal detector is never disclosed. Aside from some cryptic dialogue with Elisabeth, he also dies in a weird way in which he finds a rope, just follows into the ocean, and drowns.

The other weird character that springs to mind is Aunt Connie (Mary Black), who is perhaps the most nonchalant character in the whole movie up to the point of her demise. Everyone else seems a little disturbed by the fog, but she just seems high. The only time she actually is concerned is when she’s worried she might miss a minute of Jeopardy. Her death is also rather odd and dumb-looking. The fog comes in through her kitchen sink as she’s doing dishes and a ghost hand grabs her wrist. That causes her to slowly disintegrate as we watch her skin turn to some computer-generated attempt at the visual image of scorched flesh. Up to this point, the ghosts had been mostly just stabbing people and ripping their eyes out, but Aunt Connie gets touched on the wrist and she just melts instead. No one died that way in the original, by the way. Also, other people get touched by the ghosts and this does not happen. A little consistency, please!

There are a lot of bad visual effects in this movie aside from Connie’s death, but that’s more of the nature of the time in which it was released than anything else. If a movie came out with these sorts of effects today, it would be a big mark against it, but in 2005, this was probably acceptable. I think the main reason the remake of The Fog is so bad is simply because it’s boring. More effort is placed on trying to make the plot complicated than trying to make the movie scary. There are no real moments that are really chilling or tense like John Carpenter’s original. I don’t think the original has aged that well and it’s not anywhere near my favorite of Carpenter’s work. But it was at the very least, far more interesting and tense than this remake was.

If there is any lesson to be learned from this crappy remake it’s that you should think out your re-writes a bit more. A small change like having the ghosts be vengeful spirits of leper civilians instead of pirates can completely screw up your plot to the point that you don’t have a solution to the problem and have to make one of your main characters a ghost for no apparent reason. The movie would have made more sense if the ghosts had just killed everyone instead of their weird plot twist. Also, if you can’t give your side characters something useful to do or direct them in a way to make them seem like humans, cut them from the script. Really, the most important lesson is just to not do remakes in the first place, but we know that won’t stop.