Random Thoughts: The Fog

8/10



So, Darren, why exactly are you reviewing a 24-year-old John Carpenter film? Because I saw it, that's why. And I feel the need to tell you that if you haven't seen this semi-classic gem, you most definately should!



Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis and Janet Leigh star in this 1980 film, which plays more like a classic ghost story you'd hear around a campfire than any other film I'd seen. Like Carpenter's Halloween, the director relies on simplicity to raise the goosebumps: most notably, the fog itself. In similar fashion to the way Vadim Perelman used the weather as a secondary character in House of Sand and Fog, the Fog in this provies an eerie terror by just being white and spooky. It becomes the villain, even without what is inside it. And much like that 1978 boogeyman classic, Carpenter utilizes an elegant, ominous score and thankfully overlooked the typically intrusive horror movie score. The movie appropriately begins with an old man telling a ghost story around a fire, which from what I understand was filmed after the film was thought to be too short. At just 90 minutes, I couldn't help but feel that the movie felt it was only 20 minutes long. It is one of the most absorbing films I've seen in ages, even if the ending is sadly a little anticlimatic, but it moves fast and skillfully cuts between the characters. I particularly liked the radio d.j. being stuck in the lighthouse. It added a wonderfully tense dynamic. Oh, and the town it was filmed in is the ideal place I have wished to live my entire life. Something about a seaside town just appeals to me. It was filmed in Northern California. I'm there, dude.