The Thing (2011) | Review

Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead & Joel Egerton

Antarctica, 1982. It’s cold, snowy, and isolated. There’s hardly a soul, and where there are, they’re countless miles away from anyone else in the icy landscape of the loneliest continent. But, they’re less alone than they think. A team of Norwegian researchers find something in the ice, something big. Something not from here.

They dig it up, bring it back, and study it. They find out too late that it probably wasn’t a good idea. And they slowly discover what they’re dealing with; a thing that can hide in plain site, prey on whoever it wants to, and keep coming back without you knowing. It makes you scared. It keeps you on your toes. It pits you against your friends. It feeds off paranoia. And it doesn’t stop until it’s gotten everyone.

In 1982, John Carpenter produced a film that stands as my favourite movie of all time. It made me love science fiction and special effects. It was an inspiration for me to immerse myself in everything I do today, and it sparked my imagination. It was a great movie, and still is. It was digusting, terrifying, heart-pounding, and throught-provoking. It was like no other horror I’d seen.

So this prequel had a lot to live up to.

Purely from a fan’s point of view, did it? Well, yeah.

Coming into this film, when I first heard about it I was incredibly cautious. I didn’t know what to make of it through the early news releases and the rumours that it was a remake, that it would be all CGI, that it was actually a sequel. It was scary at first preparing for the worst, that your favourite movie would be tainted by modern day horror sensibilities and the filtration of quality through the lens of mass appeal.

Initially, I was on the fence, and the closer it got to the release date, I was getting more optimistic. Would it be a film for the fan? Or simply an exploitation of cult value? Would it be an honest take? Or take everything away from the original?

I’ll say right now, if you’re like me, you’ll like this prequel. It does its job. Does it do more? Not really, no. But that’s really the crux, if you expect more than John Carpenter’s version, you’re pretty naive as a fan. The producers, I highly doubt, wanted to achieve the same status and fame. More so, I think, they were fans first and moviemakers second. It’s a love letter to the original. That I could get on board with.

That status of the horror genre in contemporary cinema is a daunting one to examine. Franchises dominate box offices, the same tropes and formulas are rehashed under new attractive casts and big-name directors. Scare factors come in the form of cheap thrills and superficial shock value. The horror that thinks is long over. The time of The Thing, the original, seemed over too.

But, this prequel supersedes those tropes, if not only for the reliance on its parent film to guide its every move. It brought back a lot of what The Thing from 1982 gave to the sci-fi and horror genres. It was a competent effort, devoid of those resemblances to current contemporaries. It was a stand-alone film in its genre, it was tunnel vision from the producers, ignoring the surroundings and getting straight down to the gory, paranoid business.

Things like a strong female lead, in Winstead who does a superb job of not being like any other female protagonist in recent horrors, to the atmosphere that it tries to match as closely as it can to the original, to the lack of useless sub-plotting and a swift script. For that, it gets some points.

But as much as it tries to achieve that validation from the original, like a little kid looking for a compliment from his dad, it tries a bit too hard. It does go over the top a bit, and it suffers.

It’s easy to determine where a fan might pick out the downfalls, which says a lot about the film as a whole. For the average movie goer unfamiliar with the legacy this film tries to live up to, chances are it might be more tolerable and enjoyable—it’s a fresh take (or reminder) on horror nowadays. It’ll be different from other ones.

But for the fan, the list is pretty substantial. Won’t spoil anything, but there’s definitely more presence to the antagonist, if you catch my drift. The original was built on staggering suspense and tension between characters and the environment—here it was sacrificed for the more immediate and shocking. The problem here is the original had the equal amount, but still had those former elements framed around it. Another big pointer is obviously the special effects. There’s a huge dichotomy between processes and the subsequent impact. For both the 80’s version and this one, they have a central importance.

The question is, will the average movie-goer or the fan like or dislike this movie more? Some argue that it’s a bland re-hash, following the exact same footsteps of the original providing no variation or interest. Others say its a faithful, respectful companion piece meant to be just that, an add-on for an already established universe.

The impossibility of examining it as a film by itself poses concerns, since I have a bias already to begin with. The detracting qualities don’t overwhelm the necessary elements to make it a “Thing” film. The real concern was, did The Thing need another one at all? That’s where some predispositions might be up in arms.

Breaking it down into a T-chart of what worked and what didn’t work, what it maintained and what it was missing, I think is beside the point. Personally, I think the special effects were tastefully (if it can be called that for these effects) done—they respected the process and look for the original creature design. The CGI is in inescapable truth, it’s the environment movies are made in now, like it or not. Again, taking the viewpoint of a newcomer, I’d say it’s the same reaction whether it was prosthetics or not—even with that, datedness doesn’t work well in today’s audiences. It’s an argument about this film that will be a big one, but I think it’s taken without a context, which takes away from its worth.

As a whole, the film acts like a blend. A mixture of modern day horror and a big bag of cues from the original. It’s easy to go down for some, tough for others. I liked it, because of the Easter eggs it gave me, and the competence I can live with from the production. It was decent, to say the least, but I’ve said much more than that.

It’s a recommendation definitely for the fans, because the temptation is probably already too much. And for a horror fan, this is a breath of fresh air in the current situation for horrors, it’s a unique entry for the theatres (despite its nature).  For sci-fi, it’s a jumpstarter I hope for more originals to come along and debunk those tropes that keep the genre in a stand still at the moment.

Walk into it with open, tolerant, unassuming arms, and you’ll exit with a good taste in your mouth.