Final Screening Review: The Fog (2005) — When PG-13 Horror Rolls In

Rupert Wainwright’s 2005 remake of The Fog trades Carpenter’s creeping dread for CW-era gloss and ghostly melodrama.

FINAL SCREENING: The Rare Reviews Countdown

Welcome to FINAL SCREENING, Horror Movies Uncut’s rare reviews countdown celebrating the season of fear. Each night leading up to Halloween, we’re revisiting films that slipped through the cracks — titles that never found the spotlight, disappeared after their release, or were simply too strange for their time. These are the misfits, the buried treasures, the experiments that deserve one more chance under the projector’s glow. Join us from October 13th through Halloween as we dig deep into cinema’s forgotten nightmares, one screening at a time.

FINAL SCREENING Review: The Fog (2005)

In 2005, director Rupert Wainwright took a swing at remaking John Carpenter’s 1980 ghostly classic The Fog. Produced by Carpenter himself alongside Deborah Hill, this PG-13 reimagining tried to capture the eerie isolation of Antonio Bay — but instead landed somewhere between CW horror drama and Hallmark Channel haunted romance.

I remember seeing this one back when I was living downtown in St. Louis — 20 years ago now. I rented it on DVD, maybe even from a Redbox, and thought: “The original was so bad it’s good, so how bad could this be?” Turns out, the answer was… about the same.

Like so many horror films of that mid-2000s era, The Fog remake was filled with beautiful people and soft lighting — Maggie Grace, Tom Welling, Selma Blair, and even my guy DeRay Davis. The energy was pure early-2000s CW — the kind of movie where everyone looks like they just walked off a photoshoot before running from ghosts.

The biggest shift from Carpenter’s version is tone. Instead of the stark, moody vengeance tale that made the original work, Wainwright’s Fog leans into melodrama. It spends more time humanizing the spirits and explaining the curse than letting the dread sink in. Gone is the creeping tension that built Carpenter’s fog into something otherworldly — replaced by jump scares, slick CGI, and a strange sense that you’re watching a soap opera at sea level.

Back then, Horror Movies Uncut was still just an idea. I hadn’t started reviewing movies yet, but if I had, this would’ve easily landed at a 2 out of 5 — right alongside the original. It’s not offensively bad, just confused about what it wants to be: supernatural horror or tragic romance.

Still, for anyone wanting to revisit a little foggy nostalgia or check out an early 2000s time capsule full of low-saturation lighting and PG-13 scares, The Fog (2005) is streaming in all the usual corners of the internet.

Antonio Bay might not be as spooky as you remember, but hey — Halloween’s about giving the forgotten another chance, right?

HMU Rating: 2/5

Streaming On: Tubi, Pluto TV, Roku Channel