Movie: The Thing (2011)
By: Maniac E
Date: October 30, 2011
2011 seems to be the year of remakes and prequels this also goes for the new “The Thing†prequel. Still having the original in the back of my head like it was yesterday, I went to the theater with a complete list of things that better should be in the movie. When the film you’re leading up to is John Carpenter’s The Thing, you’ve got yourself quite a heavy load.
Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they're infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet.
Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up. When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew's pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.
Well so far as the story goes it’s almost a complete copy of the first Thing. But it isn’t a bad thing in my opinion they never want to raise above the first one. That attitude suits the movie completely it just doesn’t do a lot of new things. Thankfully, even with the use of some shaky cam, you always know what’s going on when the action and/or horror strikes thanks to some great cinematography courtesy Michel Abramowicz. And Marco Beltrami gives us the best creature feature score on his side is Michael Giacchino’s (Super 8). Some may balk at the use of today’s modernized CGI in the some of the creature effects. But let’s face it the old school ways of putting hours of make up on is over, sadly.
The creature design in The Thing is excellent, I can give it that. There are some very well designed monsters. Unfortunately, it is the CGI renderings of these wicked monsters that lets the design down. There is just something about the CGI in this film that just simply isn't good. It looks fake, it looks cheap, and it looks sloppy. If anything, it makes me appreciate the stop motion effects of the 1982 version so much more. I still have vivid images of the disgusting creatures from the 1982 The Thing, but I'm sure I will quickly forget the underwhelming designs of this new version.
It's sad to see a prequel to one of the greatest films of the 80's go down in flames. Overall, as a film on its own, The Thing isn't terrible, but it isn't very good either. It didn't amaze me and it didn't do any of the things that a good horror film should. But when you compare it to the 1982 version it is a not that good of a movie. It’s easy to compare things but don’t forget there is a reason why people still talk about a 20 year old movie . This version of The Thing won’t be remembered in the same way, there are too many downfalls in this version. I would just say watch this movie and don’t compare it too much with the 1982 version that will just worry you too much.
The Thing (2011)
Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
USA
2011
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen
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