Movie Review: The Fog (1980)

I loved this movie. The whole vibe of it, the cinematography from Dean Cundey especially, this thing is criminally underrated. I know it came right after Halloween, which was a phenomenon and a game changer for the industry, but The Fog is different without trying too hard to be different. The story is great.

Adrienne Barbeau is fantastic in this. The setting and the scenes are genuinely beautiful, which is not a word I expected to use about a horror movie. Carpenter sticks to his guns with a mostly faceless evil again, though this time there is an actual legend behind it, a ghost story about what is coming for everyone. That is more backstory than his other movies I have seen so far, and it works.

Jamie Lee Curtis is back too. I think her role was originally meant to be more of a side character, but once Halloween blew up, they leaned on her name recognition and put her on the poster. She is great in it, but Adrienne Barbeau is the real top star of this movie.

Janet Leigh is in there too, Jamie Lee’s actual mom, and I liked that their characters did not have much overlap. It would have been low hanging fruit for Carpenter to have them play mother and daughter on screen, and I am honestly glad he didn’t go that route.

Only about five or six deaths happen in the whole movie, which is pretty low for a slasher or horror film from that time period. But the terror is still there. The scenes with the fog itself are really well done, finding this mix of realistic and ghostly without ever looking cheesy. And this is another spot where Dean Cundey shines with his ominous framing of the shots.

2 of my favorite scenes are early on and really help set the mood and tension. The guy closing up at the local store, dealing with tremors and things happening around him in the dark, is such a simple setup and it really helps build tension. You’ve got no idea what’s happening, but you know to be afraid. I kept waiting for a jump scare that never happened. But I think that’s the idea.

The other shot where every car horn in town goes off at once. It was a semi jump scare, and completely out of the blue. Another instance of “what the heck is happening?!”

The idea of random things going bump in the night is just relatable and will always get my attention. It’s really my favorite horror movie element if I’m honest.

The Fog is yet another example of John Carpenter being so good at making movies that ended up defining the future of horror. He just gets it.

Originally reviewed on Letterboxd.