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‘Rufus’ Is a Compelling Coming-of-Age Vampire Story [Horrors Elsewhere]

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Dave Schultz set out to make “a vampire picture that wasn’t really a vampire picture” when he wrote Rufus (also known as Hunted). Given other vampire-centered stories at the time, the Canadian filmmaker was sure to include the fundamentals. More specifically, the brooding and beautiful bloodsucker who takes a fierce liking to a human, and the uncanny perils of their two different worlds colliding. The 2012 film diverges from its contemporaries, though, by dispensing with the usual fantastical action and plotting and instead embracing character study. For those reasons this coming-of-age tale has a good deal more to say about humanity than it does the mythology of vampires.

Rufus was shot over a span of 22 days in Dundurn, Saskatchewan, and it was Schultz’s second project filmed in the boreal province. The ashen landscape in the middle of an unseasonable winter shows faint signs of life as the title character arrives on a bus. The boy’s guardian (Christina Jastrzembska) then surprises both him and a trucker when she intentionally steps in front of a moving semi. This is mere seconds after the weary 107-year-old woman told her ward to “try to fit in.” Soon the area’s chief of police, Hugh Wade (David James Elliott), takes in the victim’s traveling companion until they can find a permanent housing solution. Wife Jennifer (Kelly Rowan) is naturally wary of this sudden guest, but she comes around to the mysterious and soft-spoken Rufus (Rory J. Saper).

Upon landing in the town of Conrad — the Canadian Prairies are passed off for what looks to be Montana — Rufus does everything he believes necessary to fit in. This leads to him becoming an emotional cure-all for everyone he meets. Like the naked mannequins in the town’s store windows, Rufus is a blank canvas, all ready to be dressed up. Be it a new son for a bereaved couple, or the boyfriend least likely to break your heart, Rufus takes on multiple roles without his realizing it.

Rufus inadvertently fills a void in the Wades’ home. The room Rufus sleeps in, the clothes he wears, the toy planes he finds in the closet — these all once belonged to the Wades’ son. Hugh enjoys the idea of having another child in the house, even one who is only passing through. Meanwhile, Jennifer is reluctant to let Rufus in, seeing as she still holds on to her grief because it is all she has left of her biological son.

The film’s namesake might resemble a fresh-faced 15-year-old, but an old soul hides beneath his youthful exterior. The first person in Conrad to discover the truth about Rufus is the Wades’ neighbor, Tracy (Merritt Patterson). The teenager lives up to her embellished reputation by immediately getting the new boy out of his clothes. However, Tracy’s kinky version of a trust fall leaves her bewildered; Rufus, unlike the other men in her life, shows he can actually be trusted. He has no interest in taking advantage of others. More proof of Tracy’s pathos is in her response to learning Rufus has a dislocated heart: “Don’t worry. Most boys don’t even have one.” The girl’s underlying sadness comes from a combination of an absent father, ruinous town gossip, and an abusive ex-boyfriend named Clay (Richard Harmon).

The film reveals its queer undercurrent when Rufus comes to Tracy’s rescue and bites Clay. That exposing moment leads to a thorny yet oddly tender relationship between the two boys. Both their secrets are now out. Clay sees this alluring stranger as an opportunity to take a breath and let his guard down. And of course growing up in deep isolation means Rufus does not follow negative cultural opinions about homosexuality, and he sees nothing inappropriate about his time with Clay. At long last, reality returns when Clay pushes Rufus away, fearful of what others might think. The two had an intriguing bond, but as Rufus once said, “Real magic scares people.”

Vampires and other similar horrors are often treated as a metaphor for anything deemed condemnable by common society. Fanged fatales have especially been used to communicate feelings and states of queerness. In this case Rufus knows he is different, and he spends a great amount of time hiding that fact from the adults. The closer Rufus grows to Hugh and Jennifer the more afraid he is of them finding him out. And like a queer child frightened of losing their stability if ever exposed, the young vampire does everything to appear “normal.” As Hugh gets closer to the truth, with some urging from a visiting vampire hunter (Kim Coates), he demands his surrogate son come clean. “How many secrets do you have?” Hugh shouts, reminding a lot of people of their own coming-out traumas. The standing question is, though, will the Wades still care about Rufus once everything is finally out in the open?

Rufus encounters a mass of sadness, anger, and shame in his first few days out in the real world. The average person would be overwhelmed, so imagine how someone like Rufus, who was a lab rat before being isolated altogether from greater society, reacts to the parade of raw emotions. His crash course in humanity would cause other uninitiated outsiders to run in the opposite direction, yet Rufus is compelled to stay and change. He understands no one should be defined by the monsters inside of them.

Schultz approaches the anguished vampire concept from a different angle, and the result is more Let the Right One In than TwilightRufus’ wish to be a “real” boy is endearing, and his longing to be loved for who he is rather than what he can give is relatable. The then unknown Rory J. Saper absolutely sells this depiction; he delivers a charismatic and sincere performance in his debut. The film’s multiple subplots and thematic obviousness pose a small risk, but in the end, everything comes together nicely as Rufus achieves what he never thought possible.


Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.

Paul Lê is a Texas-based, Tomato approved critic at Bloody Disgusting, Dread Central, and Tales from the Paulside.

Editorials

‘The Fog’ 19 Years Later: There’s a Reason You Don’t Remember This John Carpenter Remake

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The Fog remake
Pictured: 'The Fog' (2005)

John Carpenter’s illustrious catalog of horror and non-horror classics has already seen three remakes (Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, and this column’s focus), with at least one more kinda-sorta confirmed on the way (Escape from New York). If you consider 2011’s The Thing enough of a remake, notch another on the bedpost. It makes sense; Carpenter turned his no-bullshit attitude into a masterful filmmaking style, and those listed titles harbor nostalgic admiration. We’re probably closer than we think to seeing Bryan Fuller’s Christine remake for Blumhouse or a contemporary They Live, while Dwayne Johnson’s Big Trouble in Little China sequel project fades away. Imagine Julia Ducournau’s Christine should Fuller exit, or what about if James Gunn booked a brief horror vacation away from the DCEU for his take on They Live?

Carpenter’s brand of down-and-dirty storytelling mixed with societal commentaries make his works perfect for generational updates, but they can’t all be winners.

Take 2005’s woefully tragic The Fog, for example.

Rupert Wainwright’s disastrously shallow remake lacks the finesse of even a crusty barnacle attached to the underbelly of Carpenter’s original. During a period of horror cinema inundated by remakes, The Fog asserts itself as one of the worst. The 2000s had a very “show, don’t tell” approach to horror filmmaking and leaned on grisly violence popularized by Saw, all exploited in their lowest forms throughout The Fog. Bless both Carpenter and the late Debra Hill for serving as producers, but Wainwright and writer Cooper Layne do their salty source shanty zero justice.


The Approach

‘The Fog’ (1980)

Carpenter’s The Fog is successful because of the auteur’s influence. Between his stronger emphasis on churchly greed, eerie musical score, and abilities as a simplistic yet impactful visionary, viewers get plenty of “bang for their buck” in 90 minutes. Wainwright doesn’t possess those qualities and relies on archaic horror templates without any investment. In an era where computer graphics were still advancing, and some producers only valued horror as gory inserts within a lax narrative, Wainwright’s direction equates to background noise. There’s nothing spectacular or signature about the filmmaker’s approach, as recyclable as the plethora of 2000s horror films plagued by the same churned-out doldrums.

Smallville heartthrob Tom Welling follows in the footsteps of fellow WB/CW stars like Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki to shepherd his own horror remake, playing Tom Atkins’ role of fisherman Nick Castle. He’s a descendant of Norman Castle, one of the founding fathers of Antonio Island, which is located off the Oregon coast. It’s been over 100 years since the island’s bustling Antonio Bay community was established, and to celebrate an upcoming anniversary, a statue is commissioned that displays its founders as a dedication to their contributions. Mayor Tom Malone (Kenneth Welsh) wants everything to be perfect, but little does he know Antonio Bay is about to have an undead problem to confront when a mysterious fog rolls in thick as sauna steam.

The bones of The Fog are all there, but both needlessly overcomplicated and disparagingly unkempt. Carpenter introduces his film with an eerie ghost story told around a campfire that becomes a grave truth for Antonio Bay — Layne’s remake screenplay does backflips to try and explain the unexplainable. Nick’s charter fishing vessel unleashes the curse when second-mate Spooner (DeRay Davis) rips open a burlap bag concealing curse items with the boat’s anchor because the film doesn’t trust audience comprehension past any viewer’s eyesight. One of the biggest scourges upon 2000s horror cinema was creators believing their audiences were as dumb as algae-covered rocks, causing them to spell the obvious out in even more blatant and less captivating methods.


Does It Work?

The Fog remake carpenter

‘The Fog’ (2005)

The adjustments Wainwright oversees in 2005’s remix are a bungle of what out-of-touch producers presumed horror fans wanted to see at the time. Carpenter’s quaint coastal atmosphere is eradicated by Spooner’s Girls Gone Wild behavior or the need to belabor flashbacks that lay out every grim detail about Captain Blake (Rade Šerbedžija) and his lepers. Antonio Island’s tainted history is still prevalent as a driving force behind the weather-based haunting, but where Carpenter leaves us to imagine the atrocities founding fathers committed, Wainwright and Layne lean on time jumps that detract from overall moods for cheap betrayal thrills. The remake retains less reflection, whereas Carpenter’s original better depicts a town reckoning with its horrifying heritage — an example of hollow vengeance versus frightening introspection.

Maggie Grace co-stars in Jamie Lee Curtis’ hitchhiker role, except she’s no longer affable nomad Elizabeth Solley; she’s Kathy Williams’ (Sara Botsford) daughter, Elizabeth Williams. Her ties to Antonio Bay are supposed to represent how we can’t escape our fates, fair enough. What’s unfortunate is Layne’s need to shoehorn relationship drama because she’s (apparently) the love of Nick’s life despite his handful of hookups with KAB radio DJ Stevie Wayne (Selma Blair) while Elizabeth fled her hometown for six months — a love triangle situation that adds no special sauce and is practically forgotten. Carpenter is fantastic when letting his characters exist without bogging their arcs with fifty reasons why they’re exactly where they are in any given scene. Wainwright is no mimic, nor does his film’s desire to tangle characters together as friends, lovers, or family members add further intrigue. If anything, it adversely tanks character development because there’s no resident we intimately care about.

Which brings us to the “fog” of it all. Carpenter’s maggot-ridden swashbucklers from the deep are memorable and creepy, while Wainwright pulls his haunted visuals from a grab-bag. Sometimes, they’re atrocious see-through animations made of mist — other times, indiscriminately human entities. One victim contracts leprosy as his punishment, another fried to ash upon touch, and yet another is dragged underwater by invisible hands — there’s zero continuity to Wainwright’s justifiably antagonistic forces. They become a Mad Libs gaggle of props fitting whatever scare-of-the-hour The Fog decides is necessary at that moment, none of which ever collaborate in unison. That includes Captain Blake’s parting climax, in which he abandons his group’s attack on Antonio Bay because he claims Elizabeth as his ghost wife after it’s clear she’s the spitting image of Blake’s 1870s lover [insert seventy thousand question marks].


The Result

The Fog remake tom welling

‘The Fog’ (2005)

The Fog remake is everything I despise about thoughtless horror outputs rolled into a briny clump of seaweed and misbegotten reinventions. It’s hardly scary, unable to let audiences invest in atmospheric spookiness, and so wildly incompetent. Each scene gets progressively worse, starting with the reveal of evil personal belongings stamped with identifiable “Hallmarks” that become pieces of a puzzle that never gets finished. Carpenter makes you feel the offshore breeze rolling in with his fog, sending chills up your spine as these scurvy-soaked scoundrels start stabbing and hooking Antonio Bay residents. Wainwright doesn’t ever grasp what his iteration of Blake’s demons should look like or how they should cause havoc, so he starts throwing basic horror visuals at the screen out of desperation.

Revolution Studios’ The Fog downgrade sinks thanks to primarily messy effects, hampered by the early millennium’s digital capabilities. That’s not exclusive to awful ghost illustrations that look like someone just decreased the “Transparency” slider in Photoshop. The fog, the TITULAR FOG, doesn’t even hold up to Demon Wind standards (in which the wind is essentially fog, roll with it). Wainwright and his team brainstorm ideas that sound rad on paper — an older woman gets barbecued, a ghost outline appears in fog like Imhotep’s sandstorm face, a younger woman is attacked by seaweed — but execution almost exclusively whiffs. The remake’s drunkard generalization of Father Malone (which is such a slap in the face to Hal Holbrook’s fantastic original performance) should meet an epic death when Captain Blake levitates glass shards as a containment circle, but three pieces fly through Malone’s body, and it’s over. That’s the level of SFX disappointment that festers throughout 2005’s The Fog, all buildup with no reward.

The film’s finale feels like a prank; the rest of the conflict’s resolution is lost at sea. Carpenter’s much heavier scolds against organized religion’s dirty dealings help give his film an identity down to the glimmering golden cross, while Wainwright goes as generic as they come and abandons ship when the well runs dry. Nothing justifies the kind of conceptual excitement that comes along with worthwhile remakes, whether that’s copycat role replications (I love Selma Blair, but her Stevie doesn’t match Adrienne Barbeau’s presence) or storytelling reductions that choose numbing violence over folkloric sensations of dread. We love a horror movie that’s critical of early America’s disgusting colonization tactics, but The Fog doesn’t know how to turn those frustrations into a compelling genre production. Whatever’s kept from the original holds no candle to Carpenter’s version, and whatever’s added — like Nick and Elizabeth’s awkward shower sex scene set to softcore porno music — brings nothing of value.


The Lesson

‘The Fog’ (2005)

Just because your remake starts with a banger like Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar, We’re Going Down Swinging” doesn’t mean the film itself is a banger. There’s no world where I’d recommend Wainwright’s The Fog over Carpenter’s titanically superior original, and I say that as a leading Aughts horror remake champion. It’s another Nu-Horror approach that strips away commentary crucial to the plot’s intrigue since all Layne musters is a non-creepy and waterlogged story that feels like an unwieldy CW episode — not meant as a compliment. Not even the chiseled beauty of an early 2000s Tom Welling in a wool turtleneck can save this travesty from becoming another forgotten wreck.

So what did we learn?

● Not all CW figureheads have a hit horror remake in their blood.

● Less is so often more when it comes to horror movies, as long as you’re selling scares and confidently telling a story within your means.

● Some movies from the 2000s horror era will always suffer thanks to dodgy digital effects because while it was the shiny new toy everyone wanted to play with, golly, the technology was rough to start.

● Horror fans can be easy to please, but they’re also first to call out your bullshit — get out of here with these ghosts and their inability to pick a lane.

Wainwright’s film never knows what kind of horror movie it wants to be, and that’s the kill shot. Is it a slasher flick? Zombie movie? A large-scale haunted house blueprint? There’s never any indication that Wainwright or his screenwriter conceptualize a path forward, so they barrel on, praying there’s enough horror familiarity to appease the masses. There isn’t, it’s a boneheaded slog, and that’s that. Horror fans deserve better than to be fed the equivalent of table scraps for 100 minutes. To each their own and all, but now that I’ve finally seen 2005’s The Fog, the only times I’ll think about this movie again will be if someone interacts with my Letterboxd post.

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