Access Atlanta > Movies > Blog > Archives > 2005 > October > 24 > Entry
Sorry, there’s just no way to replace Adrienne Barbeau
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There’s plenty of fog in “The Fog.” But the biggest white stuff is the kind that’s swirling between the characters’ ears.
The 1980 John Carpenter original — which did NOT need a remake, OK? — took place in Antonio Bay on the California coast. The new flick happens on Antonio Island an isolated place cut off from the mainland, and from common sense. And that’s BEFORE it gets attacked by angry, leprous ghosts.
Tom Welling, Kid Superman on “Smallville,” plays a fisherman (yeah, maybe in a Banana Republic photo shoot, but not in the real world).
His name is Nick Castle, and that is what people in Hollywood call “an in-joke.” See, Nick Castle was the real name of one of the guys that played Michael Myers in the original “Halloween.” (Which nobody had better try and remake because I am a peaceful man, but I own a gun.)
Anyway, I thought I’d pass along that “Nick Castle” information to you as a public service, and as a way to put off writing about the brain-blowing disaster that is “The Fog.”
In a lot of ways, the remake is pretty faithful to the no-classic-but-pretty-[darn]-decent original. So it’s hard to spell out exactly what makes the new one [inhale vigorously] — except to say that it just really, really [inhales vigorously].
Back to “fisherman” Nick. His old girlfriend Elizabeth went off to New York six months ago, and he’s been having a sorta-fling with Stevie Wayne (Selma Blair), the lighthouse radio DJ, who was played 25 years ago by the pneumatic (look it up!) Adrienne Barbeau, before gravity became her enemy.
I’ve liked Selma Blair just fine in other movies. But Adrienne Barbeau had a GREAT, sexy DJ voice. And Selma just sounds like a college student with a cold and a headache.
That’s one of the things that’s wrong here. Nobody in the movie seems for a second like somebody who really lives on that island. They open up their mouths and out come these dinky little TV voices.
The worst is Maggie Grace as Nick’s ex, Elizabeth. I mean, she’s fine on the eyes, and she pouts real pretty on “Lost.” But when she shows up on the island, she wanders around, staring off into space for hours. And I thought, “[Darn], they’ve made ‘The Fog’ into a zombie movie!”
Nope, Maggie’s just [an excrement] actress, stuck in a lead role. It’s like you took a 16-year-old first-time fry cook from a Mickey D’s and gave her the hostess job at the Ritz-Carlton Dining Room.
Doesn’t much matter, though. You can’t wreck a movie that wrecks itself. And she’s not the only person onscreen that acts brain-dead.
There’s Stevie’s son (yeah, right), who gawks and does nothing while an old coot gets dragged underwater by ghosts. Or Nick and Elizabeth, who stand around idly with their fingers stuck up their snot holes while the ghosts burn a town official to death.
By that point, I’d figured the main trade in Antonio isn’t fishing, but the farming (and smoking) of a certain five-leafed crop.
This is one of those movies where, in the dead of night, people hear battering-ram bangs on their front porch. And the fools traipse outside like, “Oh, goodness me, was that someone tip-tapping at my door? Hello?” Or when fog starts pouring out of a sink drain, a brilliant, soon-to-be-crispy-dead biddie sticks her hand down the disposal.
Welcome to Idiot Island, folks. Whack your head with a hammer and come party!
Even a hammer to the head won’t help you get through the ending of this movie, which a) makes no sense, b) makes no [fornicating] sense, and c) makes no [cursed-by-God, fornicating] sense.
It’s gotta be the worst ending of a movie since Chloe Sevigny got rug burns from kneeling in front of Vincent what’s-his-face in “The Brown Bunny.”
If you don’t know anything about that movie, forget I ever said anything. Some things are too scary to watch — am I right?
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