63 - The Fog (2005)

Your Stupid Minds reviews SCARY MOVIES throughout October, so cover your eyes and prepare yourself for the spookiest jump scares and bloodless murders that the MPAA will allow at this particular rating threshhold. It’s Rupert Wainwright’s dull remake of John Carpenter’s somewhat flawed The Fog, but instead of early 80s suspense it’s a mid-2000s Trajan-fonted teen slasher! Nick Castle (Smallville’s Tom Welling) is a boat guy on the small Antonio Island, off the coast of Oregon. He takes tourists on his boat with his first mate Spooner (DeRay Davis) when the anchor snags on something… something GHOSTLY! Meanwhile Nick’s girlfriend Elizabeth (a non-kidnapped Maggie Grace) returns to the island, unaware of Nick’s affair with the sultry local DJ Stevie (Selma Blair). But all of this relationship drama is largely moot because ghost pirates show up. 2005’s The Fog splits the difference between Carpenter’s supernatural giallo influences and adds high-tension gore-less slasher suspense throughout. As a result the original plot makes little sense, such as when Elizabeth breezes through an entire 19th century journal as they outpace the fog in Nick’s truck. And based on the intentions of the ghostly beings inside the fog, many of the murders leading up to the denouement make little sense.