The Fog is a good old fashioned ghost story. It's about past sins coming back to haunt people made with style and a genuinely creepy mood that makes the film a memorable scary movie.
The film centers on several residents of a small seaside California town, Antonia Bay. The town is getting ready to celebrate it's centennial. One night, the town preacher, Father Malone (played by Hal Holbrook) discovers a journal hidden inside the church walls. It is a journal written by one of his descendants documenting the deeds of him and five others to cause a ship of settlers to crash into the shores, killing it's occupants in the process. The conspirators then looted the wreckage, using the proceeds to help found the town. This took place 100 years prior. Malone tries to warn the mayor, Kathy Williams (played by Janet Leigh), to cancel the ceremony as they are honoring murderers. She turns him down, determined to have the ceremony go ahead.
Meanwhile, broadcasting from the local lighthouse radio station is DJ Stevie Wayne (played by Adrienne Barbeau). She was given a piece of old driftwood by her young son, Andy (played by Ty Mitchell), who states when he saw it from far off, it was a gold doubloon, but when he got closer, it had turned into the piece of driftwood. The board reads "DANE" as in Andrea Dane, the ship that crashed into the shore 100 years prior. It's the first sign they are coming back for their revenge. Elsewhere in town, one of the town's fishermen Nick Castle (played by Tom Atkins) picks up a young hitchhiker named Elizabeth (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) and the two hit it off, so she decides to stick around awhile. Of course, by the end we know she will wish she hadn't. She and Nick find themselves playing detective as Nick tries to figure out what happened to some of his fishing buddies when their boat turns up far off from shore, trashed and seemingly abandoned.
As night falls on the town, an ominous, glowing fog bank rolls in with the ghosts lingering within it. Stevie realizes early on that something is amiss and tries desperately to warn others to stay away from the fog. Nick and Elizabeth also realize something is deeply wrong and manage to collect Andy after hearing Stevie's pleas over the radio. They then head for the church, followed by Mayor Williams and her secretary Sandy (played by Nancy Loomis). They work with Father Malone to try and discover a way to appease the ghosts and break the apparent curse the town has fallen under (It's also a nice excuse to have Jamie Lee Curtis and her mother Janet Leigh share at least one scene in a movie they both are starring in).
The Fog remains one of my favorite scary movies. It does a great job of setting up a creepy atmosphere right from the beginning of the film with a ghost story around the camp fire that sets up the story of the shipwreck quite nicely, as told by the great John Houseman no less. Backed with a memorable score by the film's director John Carpenter, fantastic cinematography from Dean Cundey and strong performances from an ensemble cast makes this for a fun, scary movie for Halloween. It's nothing too terrifying, but it gives some decent thrills and chills along the way, as any decent ghost story should.
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