The 2005 remake of The Fog has had viewers rolling in since its arrival on Tubi, but even as a free to stream offering, the Rupert Wainwright directed remake of John Carpenter’s far superior 1980 movie is still a chore to get through. Every horror movie goes through the same rinse and repeat cycle every 20-30 years – even some of the best movies of the 1980s were remakes of films from the ‘50s and ‘60s – but trying to recapture the eerie atmosphere of Carpenter’s movie was a stretch too far, with the remake becoming one of the worst movie remakes ever.
While free to stream movies are always able to find someone to watch them, there have been many long-forgotten films making a big splash on platforms like Tubi, Freevee, and Pluto TV. Whether these movies were originally forgotten for a good reason is open to interpretation, but it seems that, despite The Fog’s reworking being one with a lot of flaws, that hasn’t stopped it becoming one of the top films streaming on Tubi this past week.
The original The Fog, which reunited Carpenter with Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis, was based on the novel of the same name by British horror writer James Herbert. Telling the story of a small coastal town descended upon by a supernatural fog and ghostly apparitions, Carpenter’s knack for suspense over gore saw the film landing a strong 75% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes. In comparison, the 2005 remake, which starred Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, and Selma Blair, only scraped together a 4% approval score.
Why the Remake of The Fog Failed
The Fog’s modernized retelling suffered for the same reason so many remakes do – it simply had nothing new to say, and what it did say was something that relied so much on CGI scares that it lost any kind of edge it could have had. The building tension of Carpenter’s original was nowhere to be found, and that became the backbone of many reviews, which agreed that what remained when all was said and done was a “hollow” and “uninspired” rehash of a movie that did not need remaking.
At the box office, The Fog performed reasonably, but only avoided being a complete financial failure due to its low $18 million budget – which was not as low as the $1.1 million Carpenter used to incredible effect in 1980 when he scored a return of 20 times that at the box office. Another way that the two versions of the movie differed is that Carpenter’s movie continued its success on home video, building an audience over time to become a much-loved horror favorite. 2005’s version practically disappeared from trace.
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Of course, that is until its recent rediscovery on Tubi. While audience reviews for the movie – which sit at 19% – have not been improved by finding new viewers, that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to lure in more unsuspecting folks in the coming weeks. Although there is little chance of the 2005 movie ever being considered a match for its predecessor, the easy access to it on Tubi can certainly give it an unexpected new lease of life for a little while at least.
- Release Date
- February 8, 1980
- Runtime
- 89
- Tagline
- What you can’t see won’t hurt you…it’ll kill you!