By Jeremy Hannaford (Contributor) – Email
Date Posted: October 27, 2011
Print Edition: October 26, 2011
In an age where remakes and sequels/prequels are popular in Hollywood, it is not surprising that someone came up with the idea to make a prequel to John Carpenter’s horror classic The Thing. The original film garnered a huge fan base which presented quite a challenge for the new film under the same title. In the end, the modern release tries very hard but falls short of the mark that was set by its predecessor.
After a Norwegian science team in the Antarctic discover an alien frozen in the ice, palaeontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is called in to study this incredible find. As it is the discovery of the life time, they bring it back to their camp and perform simple tests on the frozen creature. However, before they can conclude anything and celebrate, the alien breaks free from of its icy prison and begins to kill and assimilate members of the team, taking on their form. This pits the survivors against themselves as no one can trust anybody else. The only thing that is certain is that if they don’t find and destroy the Thing before it absorbs them all, it will move on and kill everything living thing on Earth.
For starters, a majority of the viewers who are going to see this film will want to see how it compares with John Carpenter’s original. Carpenter’s film is held in high regard for sporting cutting edge special effects made by Stan Winston and Rob Bottin. These two geniuses created horrifying creatures that were burned into the viewer’s nightmares for weeks. The film was also acknowledged for being a slow yet intense thriller instead of the copy-and-paste hack-and-slash premise that was popular at that time. The recently released prequel uses the new age of CG technology for the updated image of The Thing giving the monster a more threatening presence as it moves with speed and agility that the original did not have at the time. It presents more moments of shock horror as the creature erupts from its host into various stunning and horrifying creations.
This film resembles its source material at times but still tries to stand out on its own. Whereas the original starred an all-male cast featuring Kurt Russell as the lead, this film sports a female character as its main character. While Russell may over rank Winstead, this does not take anything away from her character or the way she handles the screen time. She plays her character with a sense of realism and sensible judgement. The other characters in the film are well cast but due to their large numbers, they are given little time to be distinguished or even remembered before they are killed off. The only character you will remember is Kate as she is the centre of focus throughout the entire film. While this is similar to the original, the other characters in Carpenter’s film were given time to develop and have distinguishing personalities.
The film almost overlooks the main reason why The Thing is unique from other films. The Thing is a creature with no face or for that matter, no face to match the body. Its ability to change and shift make it horrifying as it also dons similar actions and personality. In most films, the monster is found, destroyed and the story is over. The idea of the unknown is what makes it so terrifying. While that is used to some extent in the prequel, the film’s story moves too fast and as a result, throws away the aspect of the unknown terror and instead reverts to cheap slasher flick tactics. This does not take away the overall quality of the film but it does take away any individuality that the film might have had making it an average scary movie. Shock value is overused and replaces the feeling of stone cold terror with numerous shrieks and cries.
There are homages made to the original in this film which add to the confusion as one tries to decipher what this is trying to be. While it differs in small ways, the structure remains the same. There are even some sequences that are nearly identical to the original which is satisfying at first but once again takes away any thought of it being a standalone picture. The shift in pace halfway through the film adds to the drama but takes away the ideology of what made this monster so horrifying in the first place. Like other tales of classic monsters, The Thing will be remade for new generations to come; each with its own concept and ideas. This one just does not match up to its predecessor, or even manage to truly distinguish itself from the original.
