"In the decades since The Fog debuted, Carpenter’s made a wide enough variety of films — action, science-fiction, social satire and more — that this particular picture no longer seems like a departure. Ultimately, it’s a John Carpenter movie: concerned with group dynamics, unhelpful authority figures, strong women, the sins of the past, and that moment when helpless isolation shades into outright terror.
— Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times