The Fog - 1980

There's a weird dynamic bizarre quality about John Carpenter films. I feel like when he has a thing he leans into, like the atmosphere or the horror or the pacing, the movie turns out good. But when he doesn't lean into one of those, the movie is not as good.

I don't know exactly how to quantify this problem, because even when his movies aren't great, they're not that bad. Back when I reviewed Vampires, I had the same problem. If someone else had directed it, I might give it more credit. But it was shallow, undeveloped, and sort of reeked as if no one cared enough to settle on exactly what it was supposed to be. The Fog is similar.

We open with a old man telling a scary story around a campfire. Great beginning. Something about lepers coming in fog to kill people who stole their gold. Then it's sort of like we cut to that story. A small Northern California beach town, which was in reality Point Reyes area, has a single jazz radio station run by Adrienne Barbeau. Jamie Lee Curtis meets Dan Atkins on the road and they ride into town just as a fog arrives.  The fog has said lepers in it, who kill random people on a search for their gold, which turns out was stolen ages ago by a former priest.

Except we don't know most of that until later. What we do know is that pirate looking things want to kill six people, reason unknown, and the town is terrified of them. Which works, and let me say straight up: the atmosphere in this movie fucking works. Great original John Carpenter score of course, good acting, good effects.

But the bad, I mean, it's a long list. Two things occur to me to mention before I get into the bad: number one, this is clearly going for a retro, 70's style horror feel, and I think that's very intentional. Carpenter was a forefather to 80s horror but was directing in the 70s, and this feels like a traditional slow-burn 70s thriller. Number two: it is all in the beginning; this is a campfire story, told to campers in the oldschool way which would NATURALLY have plotholes. Urban legends are full of plotholes, the how and why and "what are the rules" questions are virtually endless for all the hook-hands, ghosts, demons, virgins, and mythical figures in history.

This movie is not here to answer any of those questions, and though it does a good job of covering all this with character and tone, the characters other than Adrienne Barbeau have nothing to do, aren't explored, and don't matter. Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Atkins are incredibly shallow sexpots with no payoff, the priest is an alcoholic with a fart for a story arc, and nothing else really matters. The deaths are ok, I guess, and the fog is creepy as shit, but it would have been nice if anything was linked to the "story" i.e. the stolen gold, which is thrown in as a last act quick "get out" for why this happened instead of being weaved organically to the storyline.

It's not as bad as all that though. Like I said, I believe honestly in the listed reasons for why this might be written weird, and it still achieves atmosphere and thrills. It's lke a 2.5, I'd say.