By SHAWN MACOMBER
Starring Victoria Konefal, Cody Kennedy and Connor Weil
Written and directed by Steve Wolsh
Living Dead Media
Sometimes it’s about the vengeful, torturous journey, not the bloodsoaked destination. That’s how a visit to FOG CITY (currently available on various formats from its official website) feels, anyway. From the moment a gaggle of swaggering studs and comely young women take refuge in a secluded Cape Cod vacation home–they could just as easily be running to a circa-2000s CW series casting call as away from the titular sinister vapor–we, the audience, know they’re going to turn on each other. Single each other out. Forge questionable alliances and turn tribal in ways that would make primitive humans scratch their heads with a wooden club and say, “Eh, is all this violence really necessary?”
From a cultural perspective, we know they’re going to reaffirm decades of previous evidence, collected in everything from the TWILIGHT ZONE episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” and LORD OF THE FLIES to the Stanford Prison Experiment to THE MIST and BODIES BODIES BODIES, that shows that when the lights go out, the human animal seems much more willing to grab a weapon and a slice of paranoia than, say, Parcheesi.
FOG CITY is, in other words, not a subtle film.
“Just three more weeks and I get to peace out off this godforsaken island,” Georgia Paige (Victoria Konefal) tells her bestie Reegan (Cody Kennedy) in the movie’s very first line. “I won’t ever have to deal with anyone thinking my father’s factory is going to blow up and poison everyone to the point of madness.” “Well, that would be kind of cool,” Reegan replies. “Provided they were at a safe distance.”
Two things are clear: First, they presumably aren’t expecting to fight one another to the death in the next few hours. (Both ladies are, after all, clad in private school uniforms so scanty the pair would’ve been sent home from the set of Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time” video to change into something more modest.) And second, the distance will not be safe. Not by a longshot.
The innovation writer/director Steve Wolsh brings to the table with FOG CITY is not to flip the script on its head and focus on cooperation or goodwill toward men. Rather, he offers a sort of parable about how the dual privileges of beauty and wealth are extremely poor preparation for the times that try men and women’s souls—in fact, it might deaden the very perspective and empathy necessary to survive a sudden reversal of fortune. Apologies for dragging Thomas Paine into this, but he was onto something when he cast a wary glance on the “summer soldier and sunshine patriot” who cannot be trusted in a crisis.
So, there will be blood. And viscera. And exit wounds. And betrayals of trust–strategic, sexual, and psychological. At least one toilet will probably have to be replaced. There will also be comeuppance. Georgia, who is turned on early in a brutal and heartbreaking fashion, is transformed from a go-along-to-get-along member of the social elite to an instrument of vengeance—an antihero traitor to her class. By the midway point, FOG CITY feels kind of like watching Camille Keaton’s character from I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE dropped into a wild latter-day episode of THE O.C. or ONE TREE HILL.
That is also the level of production value—though the film looks beautiful and the practical effects by Ben Bornstein (AMERICAN HORROR STORY) are appropriately traumatic, the vibe of FOG CITY overall is very run-and-gun deep indie horror. Meaning, Wolsh and co. here sacrifice some polish and sheen in a few departments to explore the heart of darkness in an unfiltered way in others. Oh, and there’s also a twist at the end that you probably will see coming, but—unlike the more reactive and impulsive elements of human nature always lurking just beneath the surface—is still satisfying in execution.
