How do you follow up one of the most successful and profitable horror movies in the history of cinema that helped jumpstart a decades-long trend of slasher films? Clearly you make a movie about shipwrecked ghost mariners out for revenge.
Reuniting with Debra Hill, who cowrote and produced John Carpenter’s massively successful Halloween, the 32-year-old director decided to veer away from the slasher genre he was helping to popularize and instead go in a more overtly supernatural direction with an atmospheric ghost story. From 1980 and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, Tom Atkins, Hal Holbrook, and Carpenter’s then-wife Adrienne Barbeau, The Fog can’t really help but be a little disappointing compared to the horror template that was Halloween. But it’s definitely worth watching, if only for the copious amounts of menacing fog the special effects team manages to deploy throughout the movie.
The story is a little rickety, but the photography is on point. Filmed in Panavision on location at Point Reyes (including the lighthouse) and Bodega Bay in California, this is also a great seasonal watch with a late spring coastal vibe. In fact, the story takes place on April 21, so you’ve got a few days to fit it in! Check it out on Kanopy, and find out what happens when the past literally comes back to haunt the unlucky residents of Antonio Bay...and skip the 2005 remake!
