The Fog: Critic Reviews

We're meant to be unsettled by digital spectres, reckless Mack trucks, and rotting old pirates who look every bit as terrifying as the guy on the Fisherman's Friend cold-lozenge box.

Mildly scary here and there.

If you are a fan of the original film, this remake might interest you. It's not badly made. But why was it made at all?

This Fog lacks the one thing the original had -- originality -- but it qualifies as more than a mist opportunity.

Making concessions at every turn to the youth-horror market, the film slashes the ages of its protagonists by some 15 years, and its IQ follows suit.

The fog also does something genuinely eerie: It causes everyone in the cast to deliver dreadful performances and display inappropriate reactions when their friends are drowned, burned, stabbed or thrown into glass display cases.

The production values are above par, but as in Carpenter's original, seeing ghosts is less scary than imagining them.

It's typical of pic's adherence to rigid genre conventions that the very first victims are brazen hotties who are shown drinking, dancing and wearing revealing attire prior to their deaths.

I was held in suspense throughout The Fog, aching to learn the answer to its central riddle: Why would any one remake such a crummy movie?

Add one more to the list of unnecessary horror remakes.

Like most remakes, The Fog is pretty unnecessary.

These studios just don't know when to quit while they're ahead.

A boorishly bland supernatural action thriller.

Never will you wish more fervently for an Adrienne Barbeau cameo, just for old time's sake. Your prayers will be in vain.

Even the geography of the film doesn't seem to make sense.

So concerned is the film with contriving at least one gratuitous jump-fright every five minutes that elements like character and story soon become lost in the fog.

Yet another anaemic horror retread starring a cast of good-looking TV totty.

A lousy remake of a not-so-good John Carpenter film.

Don't be afraid.

With dialogue as dorky as the words new screenwriter Cooper Lane stuffed in their mouths, none of the hapless cast members could have sounded convincing.

...the latest in a long line of needless horror remakes..

The actors do their best, under the circumstances. Welling makes an engaging lead and Grace employs her trademarked wounded, fragile look (that serves her so well in Lost) to good effect and wanders around in her underwear a lot.

A mediocre remake of a 1980s horror movie of the same name which wasn't that good to begin with.

Another remake bites the dust.