Great, effective, spooky ghost tale. This one has really won me over over the years. It's the best of Carpenter; moody, atmospheric and full of great characters.
I like Carpenter but this does nothing for me. Slow and boring. Don't blame it me being the MTV generation. There are many slow films I like but this ain't one. It's well shot. It's not scary at all.
2 / 2 directing & technical aspect
0 / 1 story
.5 / 1 act I
.5 / 1 act II
1 / 1 act III
.5 / 1 acting
.5 / 1 writing
0 / 1 originality
0 / 1 stays with you
0 / 1 misc
5 out of 10
Easy to see the influence this had on future horror. We definitely wouldn't have Thriller and Are You Afraid of the Dark
I didn't really care for this one. I was just bored for most of this. It's not really that scary. The fog "monsters" were kind of a let down. I was comparing this in my mind to The Mist.
No tension. No scares. Poor pace. No memorable characters. Nonsensical mythology. Silly effects.
One of Carpenter's popular movie but also one of his weakest.
The Fog is probably one of the best ghost stories ever made. Granted... Carpenter is one of my favourite directors, so don't take my word for it. Just watch it for yourself.
The atmosphere is setup beautifully here by an old man telling a campfire story to a bunch of kids. The demise of the good ship Seagrass is pretty chilling and even though there's not a lot of gore, it is disturbingly violent. The one-night stand between Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Atkins characters feels a little icky at first, but they develop a chemistry very quickly that really gives the movie a center. This is handy because even though Adrienne Barbeau is good and I've always liked her strong and spunky character work, her role as Stevie Wayne is not interesting enough to build around. She's like a play-by-play broadcaster, calling the action but too isolated in her radio station/lighthouse to be an active part of the horror that drifts in from the ocean.
The fog itself and the ghosts within it are cool creations. I watched the credits scroll at the end of the movie and saw that a couple of the supernatural sailors were played by Tommy Lee Wallace and Rob Bottin, two prominent figures in John Carpenter's rise to fame as a director. And speaking of Carpenter, he plays a janitor in the very beginning of the movie. It's a speaking cameo, no less.
John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors and I always find a lot to like, but a few things to roll my eyes about in his films. I consider "The Thing" and "Halloween" to be flawless, and while "The Fog" is just as deadly serious as those two films, it just doesn't have the same impact. Still, it's got a creepy look and feel that are absent from most of today's Horror films.
I like what I like, what can I say! I enjoy this movie, lots claim it’s boring, maybe so, maybe I’m weird.
Like horror finger painting, The Fog is sloppy, cloudy, and not very scary.
As much as I like Halloween and The Thing, which come before and after this one, John Carpenter is a traditional filmmaker who lacks imagination when it comes to what makes things frightening.
The whole time I was watching this, I kept thinking that if I had 100K to pay either Rob Zombie or John Carpenter to make a movie of the horror that is my life, I know who I would hire.
The Fog is one of the most unappreciated horror films from the 80's. The movie is very atmospheric and always builds up from it's previous scenes.
It perfectly hides it's villains behind shadows making the mystery even more creepy by simply not knowing. Something that's missing in today's horror.
And the opening sequence is one of most chilling and haunting openings to any horror movie. It's basically an old fishermen (played excellently by John Houseman) telling a ghost story, and just that scene alone gave me the chills. It's one of my all time favorite scenes from any horror movie and just a fantastic way to start a film. The piano use in that scenes was so dark and yet so sad. Amazing.
John Carpenter is a master.
Has a great cast and a fine John Carpenter score. You also have Jamie Lee Curtis in a movie with her mom Janet Leigh (Psycho).
The movie just doesn’t do enough with the cast. It is over before you know it.
super heavy John Carpenter vibes throughout the whole movie both music and cinematography also a pretty good ghost story!
Not the sharpest movie in Carpenter's portfolio, but also not the worst. Of all, this is the most sinister and creepy. Acting was so-so, mood was decent, effects were splendid for its time.
That last half hour is great right? Before that I thought The Fog was okay but that last hour made it good. The tension, the ending, the fog, the dead zombie pirates, Jamie, Tom, Janet, Hal, Adrienne, Carpenter you are the master!
Anyway, I really laughed and liked the bit were Elizabeth (Curtis) step in Nick's (Atkins) car and a few scenes later they are in bed together and introduce themselves. Only in horror!
The soundtrack is nice too, but that is just always the case with a Carpenter. And I liked the fact that we find out like 20 minutes after seeing the book, what is really in it. It is paced very well, although it might feel kind of slow, but it works. Because it's all for the build up.
I especially liked the scene were Stevie (Adrienne Barbeau) was stuck on the roof of the lighthouse chased by two Zombie Pirate Dead guys.
So, yeah now it is time for bed and hopefully I won't wake up in the middle of the night to find out that there is fog!
Guys we have to agree to this no doubt john carpenter is a director of high calibre but come this movie had a brilliant concept but I felt this was wasted because of less kills and a slow pace much like a mystery drama movie.John could have done better than that. When the movie started I felt we were up for an true horror but we got no chills no spills no thrills but just boredom
So I convinced my grandpa that my mom OKed for me to watch it. I was 9 and I had nightmares the next 10 years. That was 9 year old me. Watched it again and pfft... If you passed puberty it will not even give you a chill. A classic and do watch it but that is it. There are far scarier movies from that era...
I got to see this film at the cinema last night. Another example of "just because it's a classic, doesn't mean it's good". A terrible mess, FULL of plotholes, never scary even for a moment, weak performances from everybody but Adrienne Barbeau and Janet Leigh, at times (physically) painful sound editing..."something moves and makes a loud sound" is NOT horror, it's the cheapest in jump scare clichees. Some of the effects shots of the fog rolling over the landscape looked pretty cool for a low budget late 70s production, everything else is forgettable at best, funny at worst.
Shout by splendaBlockedParent2020-10-23T05:32:26Z
Boring. So incredibly boring. An absolute slog to get through. You know when you get so bored it literally gives you a headache? Someone please pass the Tylenol.