Following the release of Halloween in 1978, John Carpenter decided he wanted to stray away from the slasher style he helped to pioneer and create a film that would serve as an homage to the classic horror films of his childhood. Carpenter hoped The Fog would mirror I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and Isle of the Dead (1945), two films he particularly enjoyed. “I love [Val] Lewton’s films,” Carpenter said in a 1980 interview with Fangoria. “They’re very shadowy, all suggestion, and he has all sorts of melodrama going”. Despite Carpenter’s desire to create a spooky, “monster-in-the-dark” film with The Fog, the final product lacks any real suspense or scare.
The film sets itself up for success, opening with a ticking pocket watch set against the flickering flames of a campfire. Carpenter uses the uncanny loneliness of the midnight hour in a small town to build suspense: cabinets rattle, lights flicker on and off, and a gas pump falls off its handle and leaks onto the pavement. The first 10 minutes of the film certainly live up to Carpenter’s hopes of paying homage to classic horror. The viewer is suspended in cosmic terror—a fear of the natural world, both its unpredictability, and awesomeness.
Once the film gets entangled in convoluted plot details, however, the suspense fizzles out and never returns. Too much screentime is devoted to characters telling the audience expository information. For example, during a scene in a boat hold with Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Atkins, a very long conversation takes place, explaining what Carpenter could have easily shown the viewer. Not only are the scenes boring, but the characters themselves are flat and lifeless, giving viewers little reason to care if the fog comes or not. Adrienne Barbeau does her best to save the film at the last minute in the role of the mother-in-distress, but by then the audience has already been numbed to zombie pirates with bad makeup, sporking characters whom they disliked to begin with.
Carpenter’s earlier films had low budgets, necessitating inventive shooting and editing choices to build suspense. The more expansive budget of The Fog certainly didn’t do him any favors. Carpenter pays homage to Hitchcock by casting Janet Leigh and shooting in some of the same locations as The Birds; but, unlike Hitchcock, his enchantment with the landscape overshadows his ability to create suspense. The film is jam-packed with pastoral shots of the California coast, which, while visually pleasing, steal opportunities for character development and, obviously, suspense.
By attempting to recreate classic horror, Carpenter ignores his strengths and creates a film that pales in comparison to his previous work. In Halloween, the scares are effective because there is minimal exposition (specifically through dialogue). Michael Myers is fearsome because he is a blank slate. He is able to represent nearly any fear, because so little is known about him. In Assault on Precinct 13, the gang who attack the police station are anonymous. The audience knows nothing of their motivations, and they know that no one is safe. In The Fog however, before even seeing the creatures, the audience is bombarded with confusing backstory. There is little left to the imagination, and there is little left to fear.
On paper, The Fog is a fantastic homage to classic horror. Carpenter takes a natural occurrence and twists it into an uncanny, supernatural vessel for entities to punish humankind, even the innocents. The plot appears straightforward and ripe for some good suspense, but Carpenter’s focus on tedious subplots and unnecessary characters makes The Fog read less like a classic horror story and more like a rough draft. If Carpenter had utilized his strength in suspense through limited information, The Fog would have had a more positive reaction, and maybe even gone down in horror film history, joining Halloween in the “horror canon.”
