Occupied Territories

The Fog (John Carpenter, 1980)

The many forms that evil can take, the many places in which it can appear, the infinite ways in which it can announce itself, the ease with which it can blend into the rhythms and atmospheres of everyday life – this is Carpenter’s focus, and the moral clarity that he brings to that focus is what makes him a great director. Adrienne Barbeau’s slow walk down the stairs to her lighthouse radio station, with its odd sensation of reality peeling away its skin, in The Fog; a reanimated zombie standing before a mirror, in Prince of Darkness, and shivering with a nameless, inarticulate longing for what lies on the other side; the world suddenly turning blue at the will and ease of a demonic novelist, in In the Mouth of Madness – these are moments unlike any others in American cinema, where the balance between legibility and fluidity, between the real and the ir-real, is perfectly achieved and held.

—Kent Jones, “American Movie Classic: John Carpenter” Film Comment (Jan/Feb 1999)