A Luminous Nightmare That Breathes New Life Into a Horror Classic
The Fog: Glow, directed by Mike Flanagan (Midnight Mass, Doctor Sleep), is a chilling and visually mesmerizing reimagining of the John Carpenter classic — not a remake, but a bold spiritual sequel that infuses supernatural terror with emotional weight and modern dread. If Carpenter’s The Fog was about vengeance from the sea, Glow is about something far more insidious: guilt that glows in the dark.
Set in the quiet coastal town of Gloria Point, Maine, the story begins 45 years after the events of Antonio Bay. A strange, glowing fog begins to roll in from the water once again — but this time, it’s not just a weather phenomenon. It emits radiation, disorients electronics, and causes hallucinations… or so the authorities claim.
When a lighthouse keeper named Celia Rowan (played with eerie restraint by Rebecca Ferguson) starts receiving radio broadcasts from a station that’s been off the air since 1981 — including the voice of a DJ who was presumed dead — she begins to suspect the fog is more than a natural anomaly. Soon, townsfolk begin disappearing, only to return… changed. Their eyes shine faintly in the dark. They remember things they never experienced. They speak in voices not their own.
What follows is a slow-burning, dread-filled unraveling of the town’s hidden past. Gloria Point, it turns out, shares a dark link with Antonio Bay — a pact made in secret during a shipping crisis in the 1800s that traded safety for silence. Now the fog has returned, glowing with radioactive vengeance, to reclaim the debt.
Visually, The Fog: Glow is stunning. The glowing fog is more than just a cinematic gimmick — it behaves like a character, breathing and pulsing, illuminating memories the characters would rather forget. The use of practical effects mixed with eerie neon lighting gives it a dreamlike quality, like The Mist meets Annihilation.
The sound design is deeply immersive — distant foghorns, reversed whispers, and static-laced voices echoing through radios and smartphones. Flanagan’s direction favors long takes, dim candlelit interiors, and sudden, terrifying bursts of light that flicker with ghostly faces from the past.The Fog: Glow is a psychological horror as much as a supernatural one. It doesn't rely on gore or monsters — it explores how secrets passed down through generations can rot a community from the inside. This film is less about “what’s in the fog” and more about what the fog reveals. Its real horror comes from within.
