The Fog remake fails to click

The Fog remake fails to click
NEW YORK: Hollywood watchers dismiss the remake of the 1980 movie The Fog as a disaster. While the original did not have any merits to make it exceptional, it had the touch of director John Carpenter's visual style. But the remake is a poor attempt to recreate the terror caused in a small coastal town by a supposedly killer fog. But there is no scare and no horror, leave aside the terror it professes to cause.

The story line is no different from the original. It is about a small town in the grip of a fog, which carries with it a number of ghosts of the victims of a ship that sunk some 100 years earlier. The ship was carrying leprosy-afflicted persons and the city's founding fathers set the ship on fire to steal their treasure.

The ghosts seek revenge on the descendants of the original perpetrators of the act. Those targeted include fisherman Nick (Tom Welling); his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth (Maggie Grace), who has just hitchhiked back into town; and a lighthouse keeper Stevie (Selma Blair).

Sponsors

Directed by Rupert Wainwright, the film is supposedly concerned with the ominous effects of the fog, including mysterious fires, the dead returning to life and a killer weed that tries to drown people. But his treatment is way behind Carpenter, who did the movie with a tiny budget, and could evoke a desired impact on the audience then.

Hollywood critics have dismissed the movie as an unnecessary remake that fails to offer anything to the eerie buffs. The cast too has added to the disaster by turning out performances that are inappropriate to the situations -- like some of the weird reactions when friends are drowned or burned or stabbed.