Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #16 July 2015 | Página 49

of the victims and the men responsible for the deaths
of the lepers makes the story less about justice or even
vengeance. For most of the victims, it’s just about
being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The key to understanding the structure of The Fog is
to look at it as a campfire tale with a distinct moral
message. The opening, in which John Houseman tells
a group of wide-eyed childcare about the wreck of the
Elizabeth Dane, is the perfect framing device. The
moral of the tale - that past deeds haunt the present - is
both a timeless lesson and one that fits in with the era
when the film was released. America at the end of the
Seventies seemed to be weighed down by the sins of
the past. The legacy of Jim Crow and slavery had led
to race riots. The Church Commission revealed decades of CIA misdeeds around the world. The war in
Vietnam was a disaster that had badly damaged America’s self-confidence. The oil shocks and the creeping
collapse of America industry revealed flaws in the
economic system. Watergate had laid bare the corruption of the American political system at the highest
levels. President Carter labelled what the country was
going through a “crisis of confidence…that strikes at
the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.”
All of those things that people saw as strengths of
the American system seemed as riddled with necrotic
tissue as the leprous ghosts of the Elizabeth Dane.
Just as the inhabitants of Antonio Bay were forced to
confront the misdeeds of their founding fathers, the
movie-going public of 1980 was doing the same thing
with America, her history and her place in the world.
While not as overtly political as Carpenter’s They
Live (1988), The Fog does reflect his cynical view of
America.
“I don’t know what happened to Antonio Bay tonight.
Something came out of the fog and tried to destroy us.
In one moment, it vanished. But if this has been anything but a nightmare, and if we don’t wake up to find
ourselves safe in our beds, it could come again. To the
ships at sea who can hear my voice, look across the
water, into the darkness. Look for the fog.” - Stevie
Wayne
Beyond the thematic resonance, the film displays Carpenter’s visual strengths. He is able to create a sense

of menace with his efficient camera work, tight editing
and moody music. The ghosts stick to the shadows,
seen as dark and tattered figures. When they are shown
clearly, the special effects are fine; Carpenter kept
them in obscure settings in order to invite the viewer
to fill in the blanks, not to hide cheap makeup. While
the ‘rules’ of the ghosts are inconsistent, the monsters
are used to create reliably frightening images. The fog
itself is a disturbing avatar for the spectres. Carpenter achieves an amazing level of ‘life-like’ behaviour
through the use of wind machines, lighting and editing.
There are problems beyond the plot holes though. The
cast, made up primarily of veteran character actors,
in addition to the reigning “scream queen” of the day,
Jamie Lee Curtis, is serviceable with the underwritten roles they’ve been given. There are no significant
character arcs, just a group of one-dimensional people
for Carpenter’s ghosts to pursue. Also, the ending
doesn’t work in the sense of conventional, internally consistent story-telling; however, it does function
within the realm of the campfire story model, where
the storyteller would lunge at one of the campers to
get a scream out of them. It’s not scary, so much as
startling. Carpenter also takes his time with the film.
He is not interested in constant action or jump-scares,
which leads to some minor pacing issues. Fewer protagonists coupled with more character development
for those remaining would have been welcome.
The Fog is not a great movie; but it is a good one.
The film explores some interesting themes, creates an
effective atmosphere of dread, has a few good scares
and displays Carpenter’s masterful sense of shot
composition, efficient visual storytelling and editing to
good effect.
Recommended.

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