Terry O. Morse's Fog Island has a familiar pulp narrative: a mentally unstable man invites his enemies to a secluded mansion where he plans to kill them off one-by-one via a series of ironic traps. To the film's credit, Ira H. Morgan's cinematography is excellent: noir-esque lighting turns the mansion into a chiaroscuro nightmare with isolated light sources illuminating only fractions of rooms and backgrounds. But the tragedy is that Morse didn't have the directorial chops to pull off all of the intrigue that the story demands. What should have been a brooding, suspenseful thriller becomes bland and pedestrian with static visual language, an unoriginal screenplay, forgettable performances, and even more forgettable characters (although I did like that one "psychic" woman). It doesn't help that by the last 20 minutes I had no idea what was going on. Here's a free tip: 2- and 3-shots are not the best technique for framing important pieces of expository dialogue. They make the viewer's eyes wander. And eventually, they begin to glaze over.
4/10
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