How do you turn a low budget, fantasy chiller into a bigger budget Hollywood mess? Give the original to executives who put more faith in special effects and pretty stars than they do in plot development, story telling or simply scaring the jeebers out of you.

It’s fair to say that the original The Fog wouldn’t stand the test of time. It was a brilliant film for it’s time, and offered short, sharp shrills of excitement and screams and shouts of “get out of there”. Carpenter had mastered this art with Halloween and carried it over to The Fog. The remake may have been what Carpneter intended, but it’s about as scary as a hairless cat. Sure, it’s a surprise, but then so is finding money down the sofa.

When Elizabeth returns to her home town, things start to go bump in the night. A fog appears and starts to cause all sorts of mayhem. It turns out the forefathers of the town had betrayed and murdered people in order to take their money and build the town successfully. There’s no logic or reasoning to the fog, but it works as a vehicle to hide the vengeful spirits, and to allow them to traverse the town finding hapless idiots and girls in skimp clothing ready for a killing.

Much of the formula for The Fog has been done to death. You feel nausea as another cliche appears in front of your eyes, and you ponder to where the originality went. There are key scenes that are kept from the original, but they’re so poorly executed, and in fact laughably so, that you simply can’t suspend your disbelief to get into the film.

I predicted Selma Blair wouldn’t die. She looks great now,a nd gone is her naive bratty appearence. But still, if they were keeping true to the film she would have bit the proverbial bullet. Instead she survives miraculously, as do many of the predictable survivors. What’s more predictable is what the story is really about, and it’s quite obvious from the start. I won’t spoil the surprise, but suffice to say it’s quite apparent, and why would I ruin it by not letting you watch this shipwreck of a film.

The plot is laughable, the acting woeful and the special effects mediocrity at its best. How the film got made, I have no idea, but it barely touches on the brilliantly tight structure of the original. Sure, the original is no classic, has its own cliches and is predictable, but that was decades ago.

There’s no justification to make a film like that now, and yet instead produce something twice as poor with probably ten times the budget. Why Carpenter got involved in this, I have no idea, but I suppose his pension isn’t enough to survive on.

Like Romero, and some other directors, Carpenter should stop getting involved in films and green lighting remakes. These directors need and must stop making films as their days of glory are over. My advice, think hard before wasting your money on this trash.

Verdict: The only horror about The Fog is that it got remade. Avoid