Imagine, it is a beuatiful, clear night without a cloud in the sky. We are listening to an old fisherman recounting the story of the history of the town. He says he has time for this one last story seeing as it was 11:55 PM. At 12:00 AM, 100 years prior, the fog rolled in. A clipper ship, seeing a camp fire on land, directed the ship toward it. They ran into treacherous rocks and the ship, The Elizabeth Dane, sunk taking its crew with it. The conspiritors who built the fire, plundered the gold from the ship and founded Antonio Bay. We are given the background of the story right at the beginning and immediately have a sense of unease.
The movie then leads into many strange events that are happening all over town. All of the payphones ring at the same time, jars break in the supermarket and everything starts to shake, lights mysteriously turn on, a gas pump falls and starts to pump gas, bells ring, cars lifted up in the shop like someone was doing work on the bottom, car alarms go off at the same time, TV turns on by itself and a chair moves on its own. Nick picks up a hitchhiker named Elizabeth and as they are driving, the car windows break without being hit by anything. The movie then cuts to a scene where three men are on a trawler drinking. They see the fog coming toward them and decide they need to dock the boat and go home. They notice that in the fog, there is a large ship which pulls up right next to them. The trollers generator blows and ghosts board the ship killing the three men. The fog rolls away, back the way it came which was against the wind. The movie shows one final scene from that night where Nick and Elizabeth are laying in bed and there is a mysterious knock on the door. Nick gets up to see who it is and he sees a hook. The clock behind him strikes 1:00 and the hook raises up and swings down and as this happens, the clock behind Nick breaks.
With these odd occurences, we are starting to feel art-horror. We don't know for sure what is going on or why. This lays the ground for the rest of the attacks on the people from Antonio Bay. We are unsure of the reason for the attacks at first, but we learn what really happened 100 years prior. The crew of the Elizabeth Dane were lepers. The towns people didn't want to have a community of lepers living anywhere near them so 6 conspirators formed the plan. Father Malone, the local minister, finds the diary of his grandfather who was also the town's minister and one of the six conspirators. The fog has come back to claim six lives which are taken as substitutes for the six conspirators. The rest of the movie shows us how Nick, Elizabeth, Father Malone, and Stevie, the towns local radio voice, solve this mystery of the fog.
I was highly disappointed with this film. It seemed to use alot of "cheap" scare tactics. It was unfortunate that we heard the story of what happened right at the beginning because it is pretty much giving away what is going to happen. After the first scene, I knew ghosts from the ship were going to come back and kill people from the town. Surprise surprise. There was no other plot to the story. I found myself thinking survival of the fittest as I was watching this movie because there were so many stupid things the people did. However, I will say that the element of suspense was there throughout most of the movie. Even though we knew who the monsters where and why they were there, we still wondered who was going to die and who would live. At the end of the movie, the ghosts had taken six lives, Father Malone being the last one, and the ghosts seemed content. The fog disappeared and everyone felt safe again.
All in all, the plot of The Fog could have been more interesting. The plot was the one thing that turned me away from enjoying this movie. I may have been scared a few times because I am a jumpy person, but mainly the movie was very predictable. I hope the remake made a few changes to give the story more of an interesting plot, but I doubt there was anything one could do to make the story line any better.
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