Just saw this remake of John Carpenter's 1976 film on dvd, and phew! they managed not to ruin it too much. It was actually quite good, and the casting certainly helped. Lawrence Fishburne's Marion Bishop is almost as creepy and scary as the original Napoleon Wilson.
What really lets this new version down in the inevitable comparison is this Hollywod insistence on explaining everything, putting a face and a reason behind the bad guys. It seems to dilute the pure tension John Carpenter managed to build up in the original, where the enemy is faceless and driven, not by the need to protect himself, but by unexplainable violence and pure evil. Same goes for the main characters: no backgrounds, no atempt to explain beforehand why they are how they are. A bunch of very different people is thrown into a very extreme situation, and you just have to figure them out by yourself as you go along. And this made it a far less predictable film than this new, machine processed, yet still enjoyable new version.

John Carpenter's The Fog also got a recent Hollywood makeover (what's with all the remakes??? no imagination left??). As it's one of my favourite movies ever, all I can say is I'm not looking forward to it at all! Ugh!

On another note... did anyone notice how Ethan Hawke looks a lot like Tom Cruise? More than that, he sounds exactly like Tom Cruise. Just close your eyes and you won't be able to tell the difference. How soon will Hollywood spot this and cast them as brothers??