The Fog
''It came back," says someone in ''The Fog," to which another character responds, ''Sooner or later everything does." They're talking about an antique watch that has washed up on the beaches of Antonio Bay. They're also talking about the shambling, leprous corpses that are about to invade their Pacific Northwest village. They're also talking about horror movies that get remade like clockwork every couple of decades. This new ''Fog" floats in on the fumes of the 1980 John Carpenter original, but the surprise is that it's arguably better.
Not that it has to work too hard. Carpenter's follow-up to his 1978 smash ''Halloween" has its defenders, but it's really little more than a decent campfire tale about a coastal mist that serves as cover for vengeful 19th-century ghosts. The new version lacks the eccentricities of the first film, but under the direction of Rupert Wainwright (no relation to Rufus, Loudon, or Martha) it's more slickly effective. It's also light on bloodletting, so gorehounds will probably hate it. Teens looking for a good scare could do a lot worse.
The best part of this ''Fog" is that Selma Blair has the role of lighthouse radio DJ Stevie Wayne, and she's a definite improvement over Adrienne Barbeau in the original. Stevie warns the town as the deadly mist rolls in and, since this is the 21st century, watches via webcam as the wraiths dispatch one of the characters. Maggie Grace (''Lost") plays Elizabeth -- the Jamie Lee Curtis part -- but the role has been expanded into an actual character, and it's she who roots out the nasty village secret that motivates the undead. Tom Welling (''Smallville") has the job of standing around looking handsome and occasionally doing something heroic. DeRay Davis is the African-American comic relief. Kenneth Walsh and Sarah Botsford are zombie bait.
The best part of the 1980 ''Fog" was how much it left to the imagination, a tactic the new film forgoes during the climax, when we get a good look at the suddenly unimpressive specters. On the other hand, advancements in computer graphics mean that haze has rarely looked so menacing. After 25 years of post-Carpenter horror movies, this ''Fog" lacks the one thing the original had -- originality -- but it qualifies as more than a mist opportunity.
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