Unseen Terror 2014: Day 15

The townsfolk of Antonio Island, Oregon are on the verge of unveiling a set of new town statues, honoring the men who helped found their town in 1871. One of the gentlemen's descendants, fishing vessel owner Nick Castle, has recently welcomed back his girlfriend Elizabeth to the island after a six month absence. Everything seems fine at first, until a series of bizarre incidents start to occur, including a series of gruesome murders. Coupled with these is the presence of a mysterious, eerie fog. After discovering an old journal, Elizabeth begins to connect the events together, realizing that perhaps the Island's own forefathers may have returned, seeking vengeance for then-unknown reasons.

By the year 2005, horror icon John Carpenter had taken a small hiatus from filmmaking after his 2001 Science Fiction picture Ghosts of Mars bombed critically and financially. Though the man was not exactly done with involvement in the film industry, sticking with producing and/or writing credits on the likes of Halloween: Resurrection and a sequel to 1998's Vampires, the middle of the decade saw Carpenter-approved remakes of two of his lesser-known projects: The Fog and Assault of Precinct 13. Though the original 1980 version of the former had its fair share of fans, and is widely considered to be an overlooked movie in his own catalogue, the director was always vocally critical of the final product. So, in somewhat of a surprise, Carpenter and original Fog co-writer Debra Hill attached themselves to this re-imagining by overseeing, co-writing, and producing the whole ordeal while letting Stigmata main man Rupert Wainwright supervise and take a seat in the director's chair.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't think that the original version of The Fog is a masterpiece whatsoever, but it is pretty darn good considering that it was the man's project that followed up his masterpiece Halloween. So I hit play on this, skeptical beyond belief, but like most remakes I see these days, somewhat willing to give it a chance.

Three minutes in, a Fall Out Boy song begins to play and we get two young men with "cool" and "fresh" dialogue.

Jesus jumped up christ, if this is what John Carpenter had originally envisioned and felt was ultimately what he wanted out of his original product, then that is the scariest part of all and makes me question his level of sanity. Speaking of Fall Out Boy, the soundtrack to 2005's version of The Fog, which also consists of artists like Petey Pablo and OK Go (yeah, those will sure help set a mood and build tension), along with hit-or-miss composer Graeme Revell, is the least of this flick's problems. For starters, there's the cast. At the risk of angering some of my friends, Maggie Grace just isn't a good substitute for Jamie Lee Curtis. In fact, she's just downright awful in most pictures that she's attached to, and certainly not powerful or skilled enough to carry anything of this caliber. Smallville alumni Tom Welling is absolutely wasted too, and is clearly there to collect a paycheck during his downtime of portraying Superman on the WB. The recasting that I was most optimistic for was Selma Blair, taking over the role of Adrienne Barbeau's disc jockey from the original. She does a somewhat okay job with what she has to work with, but portrays the role of Stevie with too much dryness for the most part, and doesn't carry the same weight or distinctive voice that the former 1980s sex symbol possessed. After the cast, another problem is the pacing and just plain inactiveness of Hill, Carpenter, and relative unknown Cooper Layne's (whose only other screenwriting is noted dud The Core) new screenplay. Though they're trying to flesh out the story more as opposed to the original, they forget to pack in the scares, so we're left to rely upon cheap jump scare after cheap jump scare. Again, this fails to help set a spooky tone, resulting in a motion picture that feels more like a cure for insomnia or a modern throwaway theatrical release rather than an effective, chilling ghost story. Basically, it's incredibly, agonizingly boring.

There is absolutely nothing worth praising or recommending here. Not even a brief scene of Selma Blair in her panties cleaning a brush in the sink. This is the absolute definition of a colossal misfire, and all too deserving of the 4% that it currently holds on pages such as Rottentomatoes.com (and it sits in the bottom one hundred on that website). I counted a whopping six times that I was ever so close to stopping this and just deciding to skip ahead to tomorrow's pick instead. Don't waste your time, don't even bat an eye at it, and just forget that it exists.

No, seriously, don't bother. It even doesn't deserve a clever outro.

Tomorrow, the director of Versus and Godzilla: Final Wars attempts to lift my spirits with The Midnight Meat Train!