Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Fog City 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 27, 2024

Horror comes and Horror goes, and Horror almost always stays the same. Certainly, there are a couple of handfuls of Horror films that knowing audiences can hold up as transformative within the genre, but as is the case with most of the cinema landscape the population is defined by the sprawl from the central locales in the neighboring areas of Copycatsville. That seems to be the dwelling place of Writer/Director Steve Wolsh's (Muck, Kill Her Goats) Fog City, a 2023 film that follows in the filmmaker's previous missteps. It's better than Muck but it's still a banal film, at best, never quite descending to the level of "trainwreck" but a film clearly lacking a finer touch.

The plot follows a handful of teenagers and establishes their various personality traits and sexual activities before they gather at a house for a night of camaraderie and sex. The main character is Georgia (Victoria Konefal) whose father owns a mysterious factory nearby. Rumors swirl about what is really going on there, and it can be a point of contention amongst the friends. Just as the evening is getting underway, a strange siren begins to blare (not completely unlike the one heard in The Purge and its various sequels, but here is identified as a tornado siren) and a thick, dense, mysterious fog approaches the home. The teens decide to lock themselves in, tape up the windows, and try to stay out of the fog, which settles around and unsettles their spirits. Tempers quickly flare and each individual begins to exhibit unusual behavior. But when one of them begins a murderous rampage, nobody is safe as the mysterious fog seems intent on using one particular vessel to inflict bloody carnage for all who are unfortunate enough to be trapped inside the home.

So the movie is fairly nondescript because of its failure to stand out on a very superficial level. It blends together many familiar elements that together build what is admittedly a cohesive, if not still thin, plot line that evolves to a very generalized killing spree type of movie that's blood soaked, gore filled, and with the requisite sex and nudity in accompaniment. The movie is at best trying to carve out a very small sense of originality in a much larger pool of well-used genre content, and if audiences are forgiving enough to sacrifice a nearly zero-sum originality in the broadest strokes in exchange for a little smidgen of creativity in how and why the elements are blended together, well, that's about the best the film can offer. It is definitely not a picture for film connoisseurs but rather aimed at genre fans who are fully devoted to Horror and are satisfied by the general ebbs and flows that the movie offers. In that way, it is competent enough, so audiences will have to weigh their tolerance for a lack of creativity versus how much they want to see a new bloodbath on the screen.

Admittedly, the movie does the whole "nuts-and-bolts" thing well enough. This will not be nominated for any mainstream awards, nor will it be remembered as even a classic in the B-level genre annals, but if audiences are willing to forego everything that makes a movie a good movie and find satisfaction in some sex and nudity and plenty of blood, well, Fog City might just work. It's a shame it's not slicker and sleeker, more polished at the script level, and home to better acting, because the idea isn't half bad of how a mystery gas might impact a handful of fragile-minded teens. None of it is really satisfied in the long run and it all really just winds up being an excuse for blood, gore, and more blood. The acting isn't terrible within the context of such a straightforward film meant to let loose all graphical inhibitions, and with limited plot and stiff characterization the cast of modest talent (and probably hired for looks more than anything else) does well enough with what's here, certainly prioritizing physicality over verbal performance.

Fog City 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

This set includes both a Blu-ray and a UHD. First a few words about the Blu-ray: the 1080p image is certainly serviceable, but the results betray the more modest digital shoot and budget. A lot of drone-based establishing shots are noisy with some mild aliasing and compression issues, but these seem to be the results of limitations at the source rather than a fault of the Blu-ray transfer, given how they cling to obvious aerial drone shots. While the film proper can be a bit noisy, and some compression issues wiggle their way in here and there, the net result is a decent image, one which cannot quite reach any sort of digital zenith, try as it sometimes might. The overall clarity is decent enough to show off skin and clothing textures, but the image never achieves a high level of technical sophistication. Colors are fine, popping and bold in the opening act. The film goes fairly red and dark and lacks much color impact in the final two acts, but black levels are at least OK.

The UHD is frankly not a major boost from the Blu-ray. Of primary interest is that it maintains the SDR color grading; there are no HDR or Dolby Vision colors here, so consider those essentially identical, maybe finding a smidgen more depth but essentially remaining unchanged. The 2160p resolution really doesn't do much beyond add some cursory sharpness and clarity, but noise remains dense in the second and third acts. So, it's really not a major boost. The UHD is the superior by a miniscule margin only.

Fog City 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Both the Blu-ray and UHD presentations include a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. There are no lossless options available. The track is adequate, offering good musical clarity and spacing, including some decent depth to music and good surround support and engagement. Heavier action elements, like axes smashing into flesh and a handful of gunshots, offer decently pronounced depth. Gore is suitably squishy from an audible perspective. Light ambience filters through every now and then to generally satisfying impact. Dialogue is clear and centered for the duration.

Fog City 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No extras are included on either disc, but the draw here is a collectible SteelBook. Pictures are provided, but what the pictures cannot really show is the intricate embossing/debossing work on the front and rear exterior panels. There is a depth and separation to elements, from characters to bullet holes, making for a SteelBook that is at least interesting in the hand. Most of the embossing work is on the front, but a lone bullet hole on the rear is debossed and placed so as to look like a bullet passed through the SteelBook, with the point of entry on the opposite side. The color mimics the movie's orange/red/sickly color scheme. The spine features the film's title in white, center. The interior panels recreate a shot from the film in which a character who has been stabbed is meandering outside in her underwear. The two discs are staggered-stacked on the right-hand side. Included in the set is a digital copy voucher, a promo card for the film (and on the other side for the UHD SteelBook release), and a very thick and well-made magnet mimicking the sign for West Craven, Massachusetts, where the film takes place. Also included is a plastic transparent slipcover with some additional art and elements.

Fog City 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fog City at least seems to know its audience. That audience, one, doesn't care much for plot; two, desires insane amounts of blood and gore; and three, cares more about how the characters look than how they act or what they say, so in these categories the film might be described as "good" for checking off all the boxes. In a more general sense, it's a pretty poor effort, but the film does know its place and the people who will support it, so there is something to be said of that. Be warned, though, that the ending reveal is really bad, but at the same time somewhat tongue-in-cheek. It definitely adds a twisted perspective to the story and rewrites anything the film said prior about the human condition. Aside from the packaging, there's not much to like here. Video is kind of middling, and the audio is lossy only, and there are no extras. For serious genre fans only.