The Girl in the Fog (2017) User Reviews

Great, intriguing, atmospheric, unpredictable crime drama

[grantss · 8/10 · 25 July 2020]

In the small mountain town of Avechot a teenage girl has disappeared, presumed kidnapped. Inspector Vogel, a famous police detective, is called in. A suspect is identified. The clues all point to him but Vogel doesn't have any evidence. However, Vogel is not above using the media to progress the legal process.

Great crime drama. Very intriguing and unpredictable from start to finish. Many twists and turns: just when you think you have it all worked out, the plot goes in a different direction. The time-jump and multiple perspectives plot development plus a wonderfully dark and foreboding atmosphere help the intrigue and general feel of the movie.

Some great themes too, especially media intrusiveness, how it interferes with the justice process and how it destroys people's lives. There's also a great greyness to the characters: nobody is clearly 'good' or 'bad', adding to the intrigue and unpredictability.

Nothing is revealed until the very end, though here is where the movie loses some of its lustre. Writer-director Donato Carrisi tries to throw in too many twists and possible outcomes, making the ending a bit confusing and not as perfect as it could have been.

Still a great movie though.

The Plot In The Fog

[MogwaiMovieReviews · 7/10 · 18 July 2019]

A handsome thriller, with several familiar and welcome faces, that only really falls down at the end, which seems like twist upon twist upon twist just for the sake of surprise, with characters not acting in a believable or relatable manner. The very final twist, especially, is badly handled, with not enough investment in, or knowledge of, the character to give it any real power or meaning.

For all of that, it's still an enjoyable and engrossing watch up till then, so I don't feel I can in good conscience give it less than a 7.

For the guy who couldn't figure out the ending..

[isaacthe · 7/10 · 4 September 2020]

Yes the teacher was the murderer AND the psychiatrist was a murderer. Only related in the fact the teacher was copying the psychiatrist, or "The Fog Man", to make it seem like him. It was only a fantastic Coincidence (and kind of tacky) that the real retired Fog man happened to also live in that town. The teacher was broke. Saw how the Romeo guy recieved tons of money for being hounded by the media and wrongly accused, and decided that's how he was going to solve his money issues. But here's where the script loses my respect. That was the entire motive. Being broke. And they HAD other options. Move somewhere his wife could get a job. Get a smaller house, cause they had a beautiful one. Nope. Just murder a girl and go through the most elaborate scheme possible. Robbing a bank would take less effort and endurance than his plan. Why not let the girl be in on it? Pay her some of the money, then let her come out of hiding saying she doesn't remember what happened to her. There was no reason to actually kill her. Especially when he has a daughter the same age. Money problems is not a strong enough motive to kill an innocent girl the same age as your daughter. So that was weak. And the fog man reveal was just like... really? All the towns in this country, he just happened to be that psychiatrist. Just so you could show the viewers there was a real fog man the teacher was trying to make his murder look like. Flimsy. The atmosphere was great. Lot of great acting from the whole cast, even side characters. The production value was top notch. It all just came down to the writing, which had plenty done right. But at the core, the main hits weren't justifiable. The motives weren't strong enough. Think harder next time mr. writer. Say the motives out loud to yourself. "Totally average teacher, goes through weeks of planning, months of his life being ripped apart, crosses the moral line to murder an innocent girl,..... so he can make some money." Yup. Sounds solid to me. Alright I'm done.

Fair example of Italian noir cinema, a genre where the same has never shone.

[vjdino-37683 · 7/10 · 29 March 2020]

Fair example of Italian noir cinema, a genre where the same has never shone. Just for the staging of a good script, deriving from the book that the director himself wrote! Nonetheless, there are some inconsistencies: the strands are six because six are the girls killed by the man in the fog. From the panel with photos of the girls who were killed overall, which appears behind the police in the last press conference, it is clear that the faces are seven: six killed by the psychiatrist (that's why the 6 strands), and one by the professor. But the paralyzed journalist speaks of 5 girls killed before the last one (?).

Mysterious and suspenseful thriller with a lot of twists and turns

[ma-cortes · 7/10 · 30 May 2021]

A mystery thriller set in a village called Avechot, it is located in the hazy Italian mountain, there arrives a police inspector , Agent Vogel : Tony Servillo and a sub-Inspector : Lorenzo Richelmy to investigate the sudden disappearance of a 15-year-old teenager girl. The stubborn Inspector Vogel interrogates the villagers, but nobody tells the whole truth. Along the way, he meets a psychologist : Jean Reno whom eventually the inspector tells about some events.

An intriguing and riveting thriller with tension, plot twists, thrills and magnificent interpretations. There are several interesting characters, all of them are suspicious people, but in the foggy Italian village Avechot nothing is what it seems. Here stands out the great actor Toni Servillo giving a fabulous acting, as usual. This veteran actor got his big hit with The Great Beauty, following other successes as Il Divo, Silvio, Let Yourself Go, The Confessions and Into the the Labyrinth. Servillo is well accompanied by a good support cast, such as : Alessio Boni as a suspect professor, Lorenzo Richelmy as Inspector helper, Greta Scacchi as an unsettling journalist and of course Jean Reno as a psychiatrist.

It displays a thriling and moving musical score by Vito Lo Re, as well as adequate and colorful cinematography by Federico Masieroti This fascinating motion picture was compellingly directed by Donato Carrisi at his film debut, adaptating accurately his best-selling eponymous novel . Donato provides tense directorial with suspense, nail-biting scenes and surprising finale. Donato subsequently directed Into the Labyrinth 1919 with Dustin Hoffman and Toni Servillo himself. Rating : 7/10. Better than average. The movie will appeal to Toni Servillo and Jean Reno fans.

Through the fog

[kosmasp · 7/10 · 17 November 2020]

A crime thriller - I thought that Jean Reno would have a bigger role in this, but that aside (which should not bother you either), this is quite an intriguing story. And it will keep you guessing - there are certain things of course that are either true or false. By that I mean, if you guess one major thing correctly, it's not that you have heightened senses or anything like that - it is just one or the other, so hurray for guessing right.

Still overall the movie might wear you down with its pacing. A slow burn and a thriller that warrants more than one watch, to see if you can spot certain clues the second time around. Very fine acting and a more than decent story make this a fine watch

Engrossing but ultimate letdown

[muso-10 · 6/10 · 26 September 2020]

This was a beautifully crafted movie which kept me engaged all the way to the end.

However, about that end ... there were way too many twists and too many questions left unanswered. And the very last twist came from left field with nothing to substantiate it.

I was left asking too many questions.

If you want to get wrapped up in a movie and enjoy the ride, this is a good one for that. However, the ultimate destination is confusing and unsatisfying.

Really good movie if you forget about one major flaw

[cheapncool · 7/10 · 19 May 2021]

This could have been a solid 8. Well crafted and with a slow pace that manages to keep you hooked. Enjoyed it all the way through. And then there is a final unnecessary twist that's totally pointless and ruins it all for me. Yet I decided to pretend the movie ended right before it and gave it a 7.

Brilliant!

[DimitrisPassas-TapTheLine · 8/10 · 26 July 2018]

What a great film! ''La Ragazza Nella Nebbia'' has all the elements that guarantee genuine quality entertainment, the acting is terrific, the plot is ingenious and the dialogue is top notch. Toni Servillo delivers once again an unforgettable performance in this Italian crime/thriller, while the director, who is also the screenwriter, Donato Carrisi makes an impressive debut in the film industry. This is not the typical Hollywood crime/noir film carrying all the cliches of the genre, but a meticulous character study and social commentary on the interrelationship between the judicial system and mass media. As the protagonist inspector Vogel states: ''Justice doesn't boost ratings. Nobody cares about justice''. This is a movie that demands the viewer's full attention and the reward is a brilliant finale which concludes the story of a missing teenage girl in a small Italian rural town. This film is recommended to all cinema lovers and not just those who are fond of crime/suspense stories. Make sure not to miss this Meditteranean gem!

Familiar yet fresh

[sedmak7 · 7/10 · 8 October 2018]

This Hollywood style Italian movie is not bad if you can look past some of the over the top acting.

Twists Until The Very End.

[jeff-2051 · 8/10 · 30 August 2019]

Excellent story, acting, directing, and cinematography. It's not a flash-dash film, but is perfectly timed. Well above average on every level.

The whole movie was a Fog.

[birchhillfarms · 18 August 2020]

I liked how it showed the insensitivity of the media, of voyeurs, of secrets hidden, but come on.........the Psychiatrist comes in at the end, his character wasn't fleshed out during the "investigation"......and somehow he was never associated with this crime, or the crimes from 30 yrs previous. We catch a glimpse of his culpability with his "Fish Story".......The only type he fishes for. Then we get that flash back of him, obviously younger, when he gets the Heart Attack..Guess that's when he stopped fishing for redheads, and why their was a lull in the killings. Did like how the egotistical detective meets his own fate, that he gave out to others. Didn't like the ending, knowing the Psychiatrist was the killer.

Good Italian triller movie!

[mirkommemme · 7/10 · 17 October 2018]

Good Italian triller movie. We have to wait till the end to find the solution.

A well done cheat, actors saving a flimsy script

[imdb-23821 · 5/10 · 19 December 2020]

The actors are excellent in this thriller. For a good part, so is the script. But unfortunately for the great detective, the script is a big cheat. Midway through the film I began to realize that all the clues and twists the audience are fed are not based on any facts actually discovered. Instead, they are fed to the viewer to make the movie move foward and fool the audience.

Little is worse than the super twist ending which is only clever to give double meaning about a short story about a fish but completely undermines the entire story by itself. There isn't any reason to believe Reno's character was a part of anything. I wasn't even sure I understood how he fit into the story in the first place since there was no reason, especially in the justice system, for him to be there.

A huge gash on the hand of our school teacher is meant to mislead the audience but little to no attention is paid to it at all. It just happened - no hospital trip or investigation, no solid recall of how it happened. That was the first time I couldn't understand what was going on.

The school teacher leaving a substantial amount of blood on the table despite his bandage not leaking at all nor was there any reason to think it would happen.

Scene recreations designed to make the user believe that facts were being revealed to sway the viewer.

The little O for Oliver - were both diaries now fakes? But the first one was discovered by the father. Are we supposed to believe that was planted?

I could go on with how many silly, dumb twists this movie made, as if written in without solid thought about how these could work consistently. They are there solely as plot devices.

But the end... an unforgivable cheat which probably gives a good explanation of all the holes in the above. 8 for the actors, 3 for the script.

Really unpredictable

[aleksagrobar · 7/10 · 24 July 2019]

I couldnt solve it in my head even when movie was over. Really unexpected end, its not for everyone

Whodunit in a northern Italy hamlet

[Wuchakk · 6/10 · 1 July 2021]

After a girl goes missing in a remote village in the Italian Alps, a renowned detective that resorts to dubious methods to apprehend his prey (Toni Servillo) is brought in to solve the possible crime. Alessio Boni plays a teacher who falls under suspicion while Jean Reno is on hand as a psychologist.

An Italian production, "The Girl in the Fog" (2017) is a psychological whodunit mystery reminiscent of films like "The Clovehitch Killer" (2018), "Lantana" (2001), "The River King" (2005) and "Snow Angels" (2007). While it's good, it's the least of these due to a TV-movie vibe where the northern Italy locations are rarely taken advantage of and the focus is on indoor sets with relative close-ups.

Another issue is the last act's explanation of everything that's going on, which takes some serious suspension of disbelief (no spoilers). The motive of the antagonist is weak, the scheme too elaborate and the coincidence of a notable person living in that area, plus linked to the case, is simply not believable.

Still, it's dramatically compelling up to that point and I liked the emphasis on the media fleshing out clues & the culprit (or, just as likely, creating a witch hunt); even the climax is clever as long as you understand that you're watching an alternative reality.

The film runs 2 hours, 8 minutes, and was shot Alto Adige, Italy. It was not dubbed in English so, if you don't speak Italian and you're an English-speaker, you'll have to use the subtitles.

GRADE: B-

Italian crime mystery.

[TxMike · 8 November 2019]

My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our public library. We ordinarily would not watch a 2-hour movie with subtitles but we made an exception. Being Italian it has its own unique style and cinematography but overall we found it intriguing.

It is two days before Christmas and a 16-yr-old girl leaves home at night in the fog to walk to their nearby church in this small mountain community. She never shows up at church, she simply disappears. A noted investigator comes in but solving the case proves very problematic.

As the story comes near its end they use the technique to give a lengthy explanation with flashbacks to show what happened and who did it. Plus a big surprise at the end regarding similar crimes 30 years earlier.

Could've been a contender

[zebra21112 · 6/10 · 26 May 2022]

Great idea but the execution was a little lacking and. At times, confusing. The senior detective seemed a bit of a caricature, the storyline was a rather far fetched and that last scene was just plain bizarre. OK if you have time to kill, but not a priority.

Underestimated thriller

[maciejjrybicki · 7/10 · 23 January 2022]

A very understated and gaping film, yet very intense until the last minute and captivating. Full of twists and surprises. Haunting. Highly recommended.

Rolling Back the Fog!

[spookyrat1 · 7/10 · 28 July 2020]

More than anything else writer/director Donato Carrisi's debut feature The Girl in the Fog is a well-acted, stylishly constructed piece, laden with a moody claustrophobic atmosphere. Ironically, since Carrisi is adapting his own novel and screenplay to the screen, I think the extended storyline, back end, seemingly over-weighted with twists purely for twists' sake, is one of the weaker aspects of the production, which is set in a remote town in the Italian Alps.

Local high school student Anna Lou, a 16-year old girl, disappears, feared kidnapped. High profile detective Vogel is called in from outside the region, to oversee the investigation. He is famous/infamous for creating a wide media coverage around the cases he investigates, inwardly hoping that the generated publicity will offer him clues to solving the cases, through the efforts of either journalists,or the public. However it is revealed quite early on in the piece that this strategy has had its failures in the past, where innocents, swept up in the media storm generated by some of these headline cases, have found themselves wrongly convicted and jailed. In this case before too long new-in-town local school teacher, Loris Martini, soon finds himself chief suspect, by both Vogel and a desperately hungry for grabs, media circus.

As in the vast majority of murder mysteries, the film presents us with a veritable 'menagerie' of odd or suspicious characters. Red herrings abound through a narrative primarily delivered through a series of flash backs, outlined by Vogel to a psychiatrist, Dr Flores, who (it's never really made clear) may be attached to the local police force. This brings me to an important point. Be warned. The Girl in the Fog belongs to the curious category of intellectually ephemeral films that, the more you reflect upon them, the more their logic falls apart. There are lots of things that aren't made very clear, from why Vogel seems really happy to confide in Flores, when he is under a certain amount of suspicion for a traffic accident resulting in a fatality, to why such an ethically dubious police officer, has managed to gain such a celebrated recognition. We also learn that Vogel is so quirky and unconventional that he harbours an enduring aversion towards DNA, forensics or any other scientific ephemera (you know, the stuff that investigators actually use to solve crimes). Roll with these unlikely contrivances and later exaggerated twists however and the narrative does present as intriguingly compelling, right to the finale.

The cast is solid, starting with Toni Servillo, as the morally bankrupt, but charismatic detective Vogel, always ready for that next talking head piece to the TV cameras. Blind-siding me a little in a good way, was seeing Frenchman Jean Reno turn up, speaking Italian this time, as the fishing - loving psychiatrist Flores. It isn't a large speaking role by any means, but is crucial to the complete telling of the story. Greta Scacchi is almost unrecognisable playing a retired journalist whose 30 year long obsession with an earlier serial killer case, causes Vogel to change his thinking somewhat on his present day investigation.

The finished tale gets high marks for style and cleverness, although certainly heavily drawn from familiar sources, right down to the continually seen scale models of the tiny alpine town where the action takes place. Audiences will be unlikely to miss plentiful references to works such as Twin Peaks, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and what looks like a very similar spooky building to The Overlook Hotel from The Shining, which we see in one long take, after the fog conveniently rolls back.

Very engrossing!

[growns_up · 8/10 · 23 October 2019]

I found this so engrossing and intriguing. I was so scared that something bad would happen to the teacher...he might kill himself or someone would do something horrible to him or his family. Then there are so many twists that it starts getting weird and so confusing...but it's still so engrossing. The part where they find cat hairs in the teacher's car...I thought that was already pretty conclusive that he did it since Vogel says the killer used the cat to lure Anna. But then he says once they find the cat they find the killer...so that threw me off. So it sounded like he was saying the teacher wasn't a suspect. Hmm. Anyway...later, when the psychiatrist talks about only catching one type of fish and they are trout (orange flesh?!) it is pretty clear he was 'the fog man'. So basically the teacher killed Anna to get his fame and fortune by copying 'the fog man' murders. The psychiatrist is 'the fog man' however he's pretty much retired. Or so we hope...since he goes back to his 'trophy' box to relive his past crimes. Who knows. that might set him off again! What I didn't like was that it seemed like Vogel knew it was the psychiatrist who was the fog man, but then doesn't do anything about it. At least say something? But I suppose they are all cold cases since the last one was 30 years ago. All in all I enjoyed this a lot!

Remarkable!

[moformy · 7/10 · 7 June 2020]

Such a movie really makes you change your mind about European movies. It has a solid story, reasonable twists, well-drawn characters and an unexpected end!

a stylish European movie great story great book great actors

[grantkenny-13794 · 8/10 · 26 October 2017]

great movie great book the story is slightly misleading but still great this is not the Hollywood typical action movie but a movie with characters development and quality acting.The directors tells the story in a completely different manner then Hollywood movies and was more of a European style movie.Jean reno did a great job in a different role.The plot developed really well and made it more of a thinking movie then a action movie.The turns in the plot kept the film from becoming boring and the acting felt real and authentic.There are some flaws in the cinematic elements and there were some flaws in some of the plot twists but it,s still a great movie.Jean reno is a great actor

Convoluted Noir Plot

[kenbond-53805 · 7/10 · 9 September 2020]

Well-acted, suspenseful, dark... Surprising film-noir effort, in Italian. Rushed, confusing ending dis-credits the Writer and/or Director for their poor planning, but otherwise, worth a watch....

Unbelievable

[fmwongmd · 5/10 · 3 October 2020]

Things kept happening in a complicated story but the eventual solution is beyond belief.Jean Reno stars.