This is
a mostly bloodless (literally and figuratively) remake of John Carpenter’s 1980 film. It retains the same plot of ghosts haunting an island town a hundred
years after its founding. The main characters are handsome twentysomethings played
by Tom Welling (Smallville’s Clark Kent) and Maggie Grace (Shannon on Lost),
although Selma Blair, playing a hip radio deejay, is probably the best known
actor. (I liked her character best too, though the boring soundtrack undermines
her claim of being a gal of taste.) There are two problems with the movie.
First, the whole fog thing? Not that scary. Sure it’d be scary if you
knew it was hiding some dead geezer trying to kill you, but, in and of itself,
fog’s not that frightening. At least not here. The repeated sound effect,
really loud knocking, only helps somewhat.
The other thing is that what the
ghosts do doesn’t make much sense. They sometimes kill people with tools,
sometimes magically convert them to dust. Considering how long ago they all got wiped
out, they’re pretty good at messing with computer monitors as well. Who they
kill doesn’t make much sense either, except that they carefully limit
themselves to the supporting cast. The barest suspense is provided by waiting
to learn exactly what happened. One character meets a surprising fate. My
favorite part of the movie was when someone happily reunites with a family
member but never asks about the other family member who was with the person.
Someone must have shown her the script.
circulated via email 10/20/05 and posted 11/16/13
No comments:
Post a Comment