The Fog (1980)
*slow ominous knocking*
I wanted to wrap up this little John Carpenter series by talking about The Fog, which was his follow up feature film to Halloween. It has all the same hallmarks as any Carpenter movie — kinda campy, kinda creepy, and lots of great lore. Jamie Lee Curtis returns in a completely opposite role to her character in Halloween, alongside her very famous mother Janet Leigh. The story takes place in a small town besieged by a luminous fog, where the sins of the past come knocking at your door. Local disc jockey Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau) desperately tries to guide the town people to safety as the ominous fog rolls into town.
Though Jamie Lee Curtis earned a lot of praise after Halloween, she wasn’t really cast in anything until Carpenter came calling again. She’s had an incredible career since then, playing everything from horror, to comedy, to drama, earning her first ever Oscar award earlier this year. She’s continued to earn praise for her roles, which is a contrast to Carpenter’s own career. When reading about his movies, I was surprised to learn that almost every film was trashed by critics upon release, only to be embraced by horror fans years later.
Carpenter has a prolific, unique filmography, and his movies remind me of the kind of horror stories that I loved as a kid. Yet many critics seem surprised when reviewing his work that they aren’t looking at some great cinematic masterpiece. It’s like they only had a vague understanding of his reputation and not his actual work, and it’s telling about how most media outlets view horror as a whole. Not every film needs to have a purpose, and not every horror film needs to justify itself by referencing some deeper social issue. Sometimes, I just wanna see a movie where sad ghosts emerge from a spooky fog and get vengeance on a town with their very cool hook-hands 🤷
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