The Thing (2011) (Blu-ray + Digital Copy)[Region Free]

The Thing is directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and adapted to screenplay by Eric Heisserer. It's based on the novel Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell and is a prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing from 1982. It stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Eric Christian Olsen and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Music is by Marco Beltrami and cinematography by Michel Abramowicz.

Antartica, 1982, and scientist Kate Lloyd is requested to investigate something strange at a Norwegian base station. By accident the Norwegians have discovered what appears to be an alien craft frozen beneath the ice. Their thoughts prove to be correct and they are rightly celebrating a magnificent discovery, particularly as there appears to also be a frozen being in the ice. But it's not long before everyone at the base begins to regret unearthing the being......

No serious John Carpenter fan wanted this film, it wasn't needed or required. His 1982 film is an awesome slice of sci-fi horror, a remake itself of a very good film, The Thing from Another World (Howard Hawks 1951), Carpenter flipped the scenario around from Hawks' movie to great effect. Paranoia and creeping dread blended with amazing beasties to make for what many feel is one of the ultimate sci-fi horror movies going. So why remake it then? Well, we are told by Heijningen Jr and his team that this is a prequel to Carpenter's movie, asking the big questions such as just what happened at the Norwegian base station before Kurt Russell's manly mob got there? Making this a sort of filling in the blanks session. Not a bad idea at all is that, something good to work from, even if we know from the beginning of Carpenter's movie just how many Norwegian's survived!

Now the problem here is that it may be a prequel, and attention to detail in scenes linking both films together is rather ace, but it's devoid of freshness, the makers pretty much following the exact same formula of Carpenter's film. Cue a group of scientist types getting spooked by something ghastly stalking them, cue one by one them getting offed in grizzly ways by a assimilating menace and cue paranoia and suspicion. They even put in the test sequence from 82, only with a metal slant instead of blood, while the creatures are the same only bigger in body horror terms and budget. Instead of Kurt Russell's mighty machismo, we get Winstead's spunky lady (she's the one without the face fuzz here), but it's the same old same old routine, only for the Scott Pilgrim crowd. When all is said and done, this is pretty much a remake of a far far better film.

Yet for all that is annoying and unadventurous about it, it's still a bunch of fun, the director is capable in having us wonder what is around the corner, utilising the cramped interiors for maximum fret. The various creatures born out of the Thing are monstrous, especially the two headed one which we see horrifically birthed, and even though the CGI is there, with some of it poor, much of it is blended with practical work and the human actors to stop it from being "all" about the effects. It's also nice to report that there is undeniably love and respect for the 82 cut. Leading cast performances are efficient, but Winstead is just too young and looks out of place, she does not, however, fail for lack of effort to make her thinly written part work. Bonus is the Norwegian actors adding some intense character dynamics to the plotting. Beltrami's score nods appreciatively to Morricone's original, and on Blu-ray Abramowicz's steely coloured photography really pings out of the screen.

In an alternative universe where there is no John Carpenter film, this would be a well regarded entry into the creature feature stable. With enough shocks and squirmy screams delivered for the genre eager crowd. But unless you are someone who hasn't seen Carpenter's superior movie, then this will feel like a shallow imitation, just like, ironically enough, one of The Thing's assimilated humans. A generous 7/10 from me because I did have fun watching in the privacy of my own home with the lights off. Other Carpenter fans, though, are most likely to start rating from my 7 and work backwards I feel.

Okay, we all know Carpenters "the thing" was an iconic horror that will go down in history forever, and therefore of course i was concerned when i discovered a new film would be coming out. After some negative feedback i nearly choose to stay away from the film, but im actually very glad i didn't. This film is NOT a remake, it is a PREQUEL, so all you die hard Carpenter fans needn't worry that this film has destroyed the original. Is it as good at the first film, of course not, but it was never going to be, and it wasn't trying to be. What it is, is an entertaining, well written, well directed, well acted film with excellent action sequences and tense scenes. Granted, CGI is used one to many times, but its good CGI and it was very unlikely the film (which bare in mind is made in 2011, where CGI has been pretty much perfected) wasn't going to use it. Winstead played a strong lead and was very good throughout the film. This year has saw the release of many poor horror films, this is easily one of the best ones.

A prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 movie of the same name, this 2011 release was going to have to do something very special to have any chance of matching up to Carpenter's fantastic movie. Carpenter's take on the short story by John W Campbell (Who Goes There?) did a great job of showing the human side of the story; with its mixture of paranoia and mistrust and also showcasing some great visual effects and visceral thrills that really stood out (the `defibrillator` scene and the `tied to the couch' scene for example) and were really memorable.
Not only has this film got the unenviable job of matching Carpenter's movie, it has also got to tie in a lot of events that fans of Carpenter's film are going to expect as well as appeal to a new audience that have not seen the previous film.

So did it work?
Short answer...no.

But before I go into what went wrong here's a quick rundown of the plot.

Set in Antarctica in the winter of 1982, the film opens with some great shots of this bleak and frozen wasteland. All is white and unmoving, except for one tiny spec in the distance that is soon revealed to be a lone vehicle travelling across the ice. On board are some Norwegian researchers that are following a strange signal that they have detected. As they stop near the signals source, the ice gives way beneath them and their vehicle plunges into a crevasse. There's a very brief glimpse of a strange metallic structure that is all too quickly obscured by the title sequence. From there we are introduced to a group of researchers at the Colombia University where a Norwegian Dr. convinces an American palaeontologist who has had experience of extracting remains from cold weather digs to join the team in Antarctica.
They soon find that the structure is in fact a spacecraft that has been buried in the ice for thousands of years and that there are also the remains of an alien being nearby.
The problem is that the alien 'Thing' isn't actually dead and is not the 'come in peace' type.

Ok, so what went wrong?

Well, a lot of the moments that were referencing events from Carpenter's version just didn't work, and worst of all felt really tacked on. A major sequence even occurred during the end credits and ended up feeling like an afterthought rather than as an actual coherent part of the story.

The non Norwegians seemed as if they were added in so as to create a broader market for the film as the basis for their presence was flimsy at best, and if I counted right there were in fact 5 non Norwegians at the Norwegian base. The whole conversation to get Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character on board boiled down to a one minute conversation in which her character was basically told, 'I know someone who found a structure and a specimen in the Antarctic, will you go there with me?' and with barely a seconds thought, she readily agrees.
I just felt as if the whole story would've been much better if it had stayed with just the Norwegians trying to make sense of this strange discovery they had stumbled upon and how best they could go about studying it in secret.
This is a film that needed to have been shot in Norwegian and have been in subtitles.

As for the Thing itself, there's been nearly 30 years between the two films and yet the practical effects of John Carpenter's version are head and shoulders above the cgi creature that is displayed here. I've always felt that cgi is not a good thing to use in a horror film and should only be used (in all films, not just horror) if there is no practical way of doing it.
Here we get to see people spray out tentacles like a hentai fans wet dream but it just doesn't having the right impact or visceral thrills.
What we are left with is an average creature feature that would just about scrape in as a three star film as it's not terrible, just unimaginative but it loses a star because when it boils down to it, it's been made as a prequel and it doesn't do the job well enough.