The Thing (2011)

A group of Norwegian scientists out of Thule Station in Antarctica find a giant alien ship while tracking a strange signal.  Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) recruits Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a paleontologist who has expertise in cold weather digs, to assist in recovering the ship's occupant, who has been found frozen not far from the craft.

After bringing the block containing the creature back to camp, celebrations are cut short as the alien breaks free from the ice and immediately starts killing - followed by the revelation that it can assume the shape of anyone it comes in contact with.  Sander devises a test to determine who is human and who is not, but soon after the lab is sabotaged, making it clear that the someone in the group is no longer human.

From there, it is a race to survive, as anyone in the camp can be the alien at any time.

Not much is needed to describe this, as it is a prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 movie of the same name, itself a remake of the classic '50s sci-fi thriller The Thing from Another World.  Like in Carpenter's reimagining the alien can take on the form of anything organic, revealing its true shape in a mass of spider legs, tentacles and teeth.

And therein lies most of the problem.  This movie on its own is not bad, but we already know what happens to the Norwegian camp and the rules under which the creature operates.  What that leaves is to see how the effects play out and what they do to distinguish things from the other movie.  In the latter, the answer is not much, and in the former, the effects from 1982 were much more convincing.  Sadly, practical effects were used throughout this movie, and were meant to be what was seen - that is, until a test audience whined.  Hopefully at some point we might see a version without the CGI, but as this movie was largely a failure, I doubt that will come to be.

Despite its flaws, however, it is still quite an entertaining film on its own.  Solid performances are throughout, even if Lars (Jørgen Langhelle) and Kate are the only two worth caring about.  This would probably not be as maligned if John Carpenter's film had not been superior in every way and if it was seen as originally intended.

The Thing (2011)
Time: 103 minutes
Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ulrich Thomsen, Jørgen Langhelle, Joel Edgerton
Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Things (1989)

Image
Most of the time when I hear a movie is the worst ever I know that is hyperbole. There are few candidates and I would even say the famous book chronicling the worst movies ever made got it wrong.  Plan 9 from Outer Space is laughably incompetent, but enjoyable.  The worst kind of films are the ones where no joy can be found in the watching experience, for reasons ranging from unlikeable characters to just sheer boredom.  A truly horrible movie is something like  Things.   This is a 1989 direct-to-video horror film from Canada, filmed on 8mm and dubbed once it was completed and the makers realized most of the sound was unusable.  Director Andrew Jordan and writer Barry J. Gillis managed to grab porn star Amber Lynn for an hour to shoot her as a news reporter just so they could put her face on the video box.  Most of the music was done by Gillis, and some of it by a local band called Familiar Strangers.  It was filmed in large part in Andrew Norman's basement, and most of the props w
Read more

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Image
Virtual reality has been one of the most hyped, and one of the most disappointing, promises of technology.  While it promotes immersion into a cybernetic world what it really provides are video games with 20-year-old graphics and the occasional bruise when one accidentally hits a closet door.  In the case of The Lawnmower Man  what it is promising is that something with graphics just a little bit better than Dire Straits's "Money for Nothing" video will somehow change the world and alter humanity. It was laughable then and it is laughable now.  The only person not laughing was Stephen King, who demanded that his name be removed from all future advertising for the movie because he never wrote this.  The story, of which a short film was made in the 1980s, involves a man unwittingly hiring a Greek god to mow his lawn and, after said god creates a spectacle, paying for the landscaping with his life.  It's only a few pages and, in my opinion, it is one of King's worst
Read more

The Omen (1976)

Image
A movie does not have to be high art to strike a chord with the public.  The Omen was an attempt by writer David Seltzer to make some money and get a nice trip to the UK.  It just so happened that because of The Exorcist the public was hungry for more movies involving demons and such, and adding a veneer of Catholicism didn't hurt either.  The Vatican's secrets are most likely of more interest to scholars than anyone else, but a religion doesn't hang on over the centuries without creating a bit of mystery.  In this case, Seltzer settled on the Revelation of St. John, the low-fantasy portion of the Bible and, instead of an hilariously named (albeit historically correct) demon named Pazuzu, with The Omen we get the son of Satan himself.  When Robert Thorne (Gregory Peck) is informed that his child has died he visits a priest at the hospital in Rome where his wife is coalescing.  He is given an offer too good to be true: a foundling, whose mother died in childbirth, was born
Read more