“We were aided by an unearthly fog that rolled in, as if Heaven-sent, although God had no part in our actions tonight.”
I had watched The Fog once, years ago and before I really knew the ins and outs of the horror genre. I remember it left me cold, much like the chilling phenomenon that envelops the town in this film. Apparently, I was a stupid teenager. The problem with most ghost films is they’re incredibly susceptible to the cheap and easy jump scare; who needs to waste time building tension and atmosphere when you can just shout “Boo!”, right? John Carpenter, however, is a master of capturing the inevitable and inexorable—we see the ghosts in the frame as they slowly approach our protagonists, we know they’re massing outside the church where they’ve taken refuge, and we can clearly see the bank of fog – moving like a specter itself – rapidly sweeping in, an uncanny harbinger of vengeance. The film’s extended climax is an uninterrupted, almost unbearable 7-minute sequence of creeping danger, as Carpenter’s score – all icy electronic arpeggios - ratchets up the suspense as our heroes are boxed in on all sides. There’s no giant chase or action-packed confrontation; Carpenter understands that less is more. Witness heroine Adrienne Barbeau in the lighthouse, hearing the metallic banging on the door echoing up through the tower, or the resignation one can hear in every syllable that falls from Hal Holbrook’s troubled priest’s mouth. Carpenter has constructed this film with the fastidiousness of a watchmaker; not an ounce of fat as far as subplots or extraneous characters, a ruthless economy in camera moves and editing trickery, no reliance on the jump scare or gore/sex…just a century-old mystery that unfolds to our ever-growing dread. A class act if ever there was one. Halloween gets all the attention – and deservedly so – but its younger sibling is in need of love, too.
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