film | Inclement weather

A tedious retread of John Carpenter's unsatisfactory-to-begin-with 1980 horror flick, THE FOG clumsily plops a couple of successful TV actors in a maritime ghost tale that'll only make their prospects for big-screen stardom soggier than a wet kleenex. Smallville's Tom Welling plays a boat-tour entrepreneur and Lost's Maggie Grace (killed off during November sweeps) his estranged girlfriend, residents of a quaint Oregonian island village that'd look sooooo cute on a box of oyster crackers. As Welling and Grace reunite just in time for a silly shower sex scene, a malevolent mist brings to the town a phantom ship chock full o' vengeful, leprous banshees. Faster than you can shiver your timbers — um, not to imply the film is briskly paced or anything — there are hackneyed story revelations, as many eye-gougings and live cremations as the PG-13 rating allows, and a woefully miscast Selma Blair as the most saturnine radio disc jockey in cinematic history. With the exception of Welling's ill-fitting pacific-northwest sweater ensembles, not a single bit of this dreck is scary, unless watching nondescript characters run from computer-generated water vapor quickens your pulse. Shockingly, Carpenter produced, but pin most of the blame on Cooper Layne's totally clearance-rack script and the clunky direction of Rupert Wainwright (Stigmata: woof!), who you shouldn't confuse with singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright, largely because Rufus Wainwright is an artist who's actually good at what he does. D-