Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
10/24/11
Here’s,
well, the thing: half the movies made today seem to be linked to
something else, a previous film, a TV show, a toy or a novel (graphic or
otherwise), all in an attempt to get those of us who love that thing to
check them out. But the resulting films are almost always best enjoyed
if one can divorce themselves from the expectations our affection for that
property generates. Case in point: The Thing is the
third film version of John W. Campbell Jr.’s short story "Who Goes There?",
and it exists to play off our interest in the second, John Carpenter’s
seminal 1982 sci-fi gorefest. While it’s essentially a remake, writer
Eric Heisserer is clever enough to position his story as a really aggressive
prequel, in which essentially the same events occur the day before Kurt
Russell and his crew came upon the thing from another world, all the while
“explaining” the unexplained events that kick off that movie. It’s
a fun gimmick as far as it goes, and The Thing is actually an entertaining
little sci-fi horror movie, a big-budget cousin to the sort of thing one
catches on the SyFy Channel on Saturday nights powered (as the best of
those always are) by a committed star turn by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Delightfully gross and reasonably exciting, it’s a fun time at the movies
for the sort of person who enjoyed its predecessor but isn’t expecting
something nearly as good.
A group
of Antarctic researchers are exploring a mysterious underground sound when
their vehicle crashes through the ice. The leader of their expedition,
Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) travels to America to recruit paleontologist
Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to examine what they found.
When she and colleague Adam Goodman (Eric Christian Olsen) reach the site,
they’re shown the last thing they expect: frozen in the ice are an
alien spaceship and the body of an inhuman creature that presumably piloted
it. The thing and the surrounding ice are hauled back to their research
station, where samples are taken and premature celebrations held, at least
until the ice starts to melt and the still-living beast bursts out and
starts running amok. The crew succeeds in killing it with a flamethrower,
but not before it’s killed one of their own. Kate does tests on the
victim’s blood and finds that alien cells are still living inside the sample,
systematically replicating their human counterparts: the alien is
designed to take the form of its prey. Two wounded men and two American
pilots, Sam Carter (Joel Edgerton) and Jameson (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje)
are leaving via helicopter when she flags them down: Carter decides
to land and the creature, which is indeed trying to escape into the outside
world disguised as one of its victims, attacks, crashing the chopper.
Now begins the game: who is human and who is not? The thing
cannot replicate nonliving tissue, so anyone with fillings in their teeth
is the real deal, but what does that mean about everyone who doesn’t, or
Carter and Jameson when they mysteriously turn up having survived the crash?
One thing is certain: if the creature gets away from the base alive,
humanity doesn’t stand a chance.
Fans
of Carpenter’s classically repulsive original will not be disappointed
by the updated Thing: this is one seriously revolting creature, its
cloned bodies splitting open at the nastiest places to reveal random masses
of teeth and tentacles that attack with extreme prejudice. Post-HIV,
the creature’s very proximity is frightening: surely letting something
like this touch you CAN’T be good, as one of the characters finds out to
their extreme displeasure late in the game. Director Mattijis van
Heijningen gets a lot of mileage out how frightening it is to have anyone
in the same room with this beastie, and that’s The Thing’s primary
reason to exist: as a horror action movie, it’s got a lot of scary
kick.
What
it doesn’t have is the original’s (the original remake's?) suspense or
thematic depth: Carpenter’s primary concern was that you can’t know
who the creature is at any given time (even right up to the final shot),
but this premake isn’t really interested in the whole “who’s who” gambit
as anything other than an excuse for the creature to sneak up next to people
and say “what big teeth I have!” Repeatedly it strikes when it should
be biding its time, and while a little lip service to the idea that it’s
so hungry it can’t control itself might have papered over those issues,
the creature ultimately comes off as more of a studio executive giving
itself constant notes on the need to attack early and often so the audience
doesn’t get bored. I couldn’t help but wonder when we hear but don’t
see a key plot point at the end whether there’s a cut of the film more
interested in the idea that making sure the creature doesn’t escape doesn’t
guarantee that a few innocent people don’t get burned alive just to be
sure, but the movie we have is very much a standard issue “people in an
isolated place run like hell while a monster chases them” flick.
It doesn’t even seem to be all that cold at this particular Antarctic research
station.
While
the whole prequel business doesn’t get a ton of play, credit the filmmakers
with moving all the chess pieces to the exact spots on the board that Carpenter
found them nearly 30 years ago without breaking a sweat as well as using
the time compression to craft a nifty solution to what seems on paper like
a crippling problem: how can anyone survive this movie when nobody
alerted the authorities before Snake Plissken and company showed up on
the scene? Plus, we get to see a ton more of the Thing’s ship, wisely
designed in such a way as to explain absolutely nothing while pumping up
the creature’s otherworldly mystique. These elements do a nice job
of dressing up the latest assembly-line horror remake as something a little
more.
But,
as I said, at its heart this is a big budget SyFy Channel movie, and those
rely on the actors to get by. We never learn a thing about any of
The Thing’s characters: Kate’s supposed to be a paleontologist
but seems to possess whatever scientific knowledge and skill the moment
requires, and she comes to the base packing absolutely zero backstory,
which seems just a little more than any of the other characters have.
But Winstead’s performance is spot-on: it’s easy to see why the other
characters fall in line behind her leadership and moral certainty, and
John McClane’s daughter makes a strong action heroine. Edgerton,
so terrific in his breakthrough role in Warrior last month, doesn’t
get much to do other than carry a mean flamethrower and walk three steps
behind Kate, but he does have presence, just as Olsen does a good job of
being in over his head. Perhaps the best-cast actor is Thomsen, who
oozes wrongheaded arrogance as that old sci-fi chestnut (and the movie’s
most direct character link to the original 1951 Thing), The Scientist
Too Concerned About His Stupid Scientific Advancement to Realize We’re
All Going to Get Ripped to Shreads.
I had
a good time at The Thing: I recoiled in delighted disgust
from the revolting creature, rooted really hard for the humans to survive
and got a kick out of the clever ways the filmmakers tied their movie into
its predecessor. I also didn’t lose a lot of sleep over the fact
that this isn’t even in the same zip code of quality as its classic source.
No doubt, the world did not need a prequelized remake of The Thing.
But it got a pretty good one. |
