John Carpenter’s follow-up to the seminal Halloween is, frequently, negatively compared to his other films. It’s probably true that, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not the classic work of cinema that some of his other creations are. On the other hand, it’s a well-crafted horror film that has, over the years, garnered a strong reputation as a more mature story than many of Carpenter’s other films.

From the beginning, Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill, create a sense of unreality for the film. Even more than the usual distancing effects of cinema, The Fog calls into question the nature of “reality” on a movie screen. The first image we see is a quote from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe: “is all that we see or seem/but a dream within a dream?” From there, we move to a scene of an old man telling a campfire ghost story to a group of children. It could easily be argued that from this that what we are about to witness is, within the screen, “just a story.” I find this line of thought very interesting, because most horror films rely on a plausible reality for their effectiveness as an entry point for the audience. A way for them to identify with the characters and suspend their disbelief. But potentially adding that extra layer of artifice blocks the audience from identification, leaving them more adrift and unsettled.

The method in which the film is shot adds to this disquieting effect. Large expanses of empty spaces preoccupy this film. Vast oceans. Deserted streets. Empty churches. There are great swathes of nothingness in this film, with human figures lone and isolated in these landscapes. When the fog rolls into these spaces, they are filled with a thick and palpable sense of dread and foreboding. The use of fog as a carrier for evil also works wonderfully here. Anyone who has driven or walked alone through a thick fog knows how disquieting it is. Carpenter replicates that unease and compounds it, because the audience knows that, this time, there really is something that means to do people harm in it.

That use of unease and uncertainty created by the fog is compounded by the nature of what is in it. We’re already operating under the rules of a campfire tale, so even the frayed logic of the supernatural is at question here. All we can truly guess about the nature of what is in the fog is that it is motivated by a desire for revenge. The question of whether the creatures in the fog are zombies or ghosts or demons or something else entirely is never resolved, never exactly addressed, and ultimately unimportant. They are, simply, a menace. A misguided and eternal grudge from beyond the grave. Even by the logic of a horror story, their motive and nature is unclear. We are led to believe that they want the gold that was stolen by the townpeople’s ancestors. We are also led to believe that they seek to kill the descendants of the conspirators who killed them a hundred years ago. Both theories prove to be, at best, incomplete, as they menace those not connected to the conspiracy and are not satisfied with having their property returned. They simply are, and there is no reasoning or promise of respite for them.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 12:01 AM and is filed under movies, reviews, Spooky Month. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.