It’s dark and eerily quiet outside. You’re driving to your destination, but your surroundings are shrouded by fog that hangs in the distance, cloaking and concealing your normally clear path ahead. Your fingers tense around the steering wheel as uneasiness takes over your body. What lies inside of that low-lying cloud? Is it ghosts or some other supernatural force? There is something unsettling about fog and the blanket that it tosses over everything around it. So it is not shocking that foggy and misty conditions are such a staple in horror films with a history that spans over many decades. From very on-the-nose titles like The Mist and The Fog to 1920s expressionist films, fog and mist are a vital part of the genres’ many scary tales.
Of course, there’s no way to pinpoint the first horror film that utilized mist or fog to stir up scares. Many films have been lost to time because preservation efforts were not as prevalent 100 years ago as they are now, unfortunately. But, in the 1920s, there were silent horror films like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) and The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari (1920) that relied on deep mist and darkness as a metaphor for dread and mental spiraling. The former centers on a hunt for a Jack the Ripper-esque killer in London, leaning into very early slasher territory. A killer is frightening enough, but one who is able to slink around in cloudiness adds an extra chill. Now you see them, and it’s far too late for you…
As the 1940s and 1950s rolled around, creature feature films were all the rage. And one way to convey the dread of something monstrous and/or otherworldly descending upon an unsuspecting victim or village was using mist and fog for dread. Did you see what you thought you saw? Maybe not… or definitely so. Perhaps the most prevalent answer is The Crawling Eye (1958), which used foggy weather as a hiding place for extraterrestrial beings. There’s also The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), a Sherlock Holmes tale that centers on fog, bogs, and a hellish hound.
Oftentimes, it is what we cannot see and what is imagined that is far scarier than what the actual real threat is. Our human imagination alongside some cleverly placed shadows and eerie lighting bouncing off mist can do some serious dread heavy lifting in almost any narrative. Mist and fog are the sisters of darkness, heightening up tension and providing a Gothic feel that is so closely related to what we’ve encountered in real life. And, from a financial standpoint, it is cost-effective to pump in some heavy mist and fog to make things a touch spookier.
The City of the Dead (1960) uses fog as a cloaking device for a remote village, and we all know that small towns are some of the scariest places on Earth. Coupling fog with isolated environments like a field or forest is the perfect place to hide sinister deeds like an evil coven. Fog and mist can turn pretty much anywhere into a chilling place, whether it is somewhere that’s already strange like a graveyard or a seemingly “safe” place like a suburban street. Who can forget that iconic shot of Father Merrin standing on a street underneath a glowing street lamp surrounded by fog in The Exorcist? It is perhaps one of the most iconic images in cinema history.
The great John Carpenter found inspiration in adverse weather for his 1980 film The Fog, which takes place in a coastal Cali town that is covered by a fog filled with vengeful spirits. The same goes for The Shining, which uses shadows and mist to create a barrier of sorts that locks its characters into a space filled with a dark energy that drives a man mad.
This spirit carried over into 1990s and 2000s slashers like I Know What You Did Last Summer, another coastal tale that often uses fog with the night to wrap a small town in the terrors of a vengeful killer, and Frank Darabont’s The Mist (2007), with a heavy mist that covers a town and conceals Lovecraftian monsters.
To this day, shows like Widow’s Bay (2026) use a heavy fog as a part of an island’s centuries old supernatural curse that’s rising just as its mayor wants to turn the town into the next Martha’s Vineyard. Fog will always set the right vibe for everything from slasher terror to paranormal happenings, and we hope it never fades away.
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Source: Kiat Media
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