Let's hope 'The Fog' dissappears

At one point in the middle of this loss of eight bucks, Selma "I'm only in it for the paycheck" Blair asks an intriguing question: "What kind of fog goes against the wind?"\nI know the answer. The kind of fog that sucks. Hard.\nLater, after a bunch of extras die in incredibly unimaginative ways, she figures it out. There's something about this here fog that ain't right: "There's something in the fog!" she wails. \nShe's right. There is something in the fog. And it sucks. \nAre you getting the point?\n"The Fog" is a remake of a John Carpenter film of the same name, only this time it's directed by Rupert Wainwright, the cinematic genius behind "Stigmata" and "Blank Check." I haven't seen "Blank Check" since my testicles descended, and "Stigmata" was overdone, but if this is Wainwright's idea of a horror movie, he shouldn't be allowed near a camera again by court order. \nIt's really not fair to compare the remake to the original film. Carpenter is considered by many to be a god of the horror genre, and while "The Fog" was never considered his masterpiece, it was still well received by fans. This movie, on the other hand, exists on an entirely different level of horrid. \nBut hey, what the hell, let's summarize. Nick Castle (Tom Welling) is an attractive twenty-something who runs fishing charters from quaint Antonio Island, Oregon. He's got a sidekick (DeRay Davis) who's supposed to provide comic relief, and a love interest (Maggie Grace), and lives in a stunningly beautiful seaside village, but still manages to hate his surroundings. Why? Who knows; the movie doesn't bother to explain.\nAnyway, it turns out that the town's founding fathers did some shady business with a bunch of lepers back in the day, and now the lepers' CGI ghosts are back to take revenge on their descendants. That's your premise.\nOh, and they do it all in the fog. The ghosts arrive and move through the fog. Carpenter used it to add to suspense, but now it just looks like a garage band smoke machine. It's weak-looking, not creepy and there's no point -- save the fact that they had to call the movie something, and "This Movie Was Totally Half-assed" was vetoed by the studio.\nSo yeah, the fog and the ghosts start offing the cast. But you won't care, because it's painfully obvious that the cast doesn't either. They're as aware as the rest of us that the script sucks, and so does the effort. If a film attempts to raise tension because a character can't drive manual, there's something wrong. That happens here. Seriously.\nThrow in a head-scratching ending to completely muddle whatever it was that "The Fog" was trying to accomplish, and you've got one of the worst movies of 2005. And, as of last Friday, it's playing on two screens at the local theater, which means that Hollywood thinks the public actually enjoys this kind of stuff.\nProve them wrong. Please, please, please don't see "The Fog"