Climbing Higher Pictures

Leave it to Hollywood to come up with the worst ideas for movies to be sequalized, prequelized, and remade. Does John Carpenter’s The Thing ring a bell? That’s because it may be one of the most well known Sci-Fi/Horror films this side of Alien. Now with Prometheus on the horizon, apparently the decision was reached that this was also the kind of film that was in need of a “re-imagining.” Is this just another in a long legacy of failed continuations, or does it hold something original under the well worn exterior?

 The Thing Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: C

When it comes to remaking classic horror films, few have had as thankless a task as developing a follow up to John Carpenter’s classic The Thing. For Eric Heisserer, I feel like this project must have felt like both the chance of a lifetime, and a curse of epic proportions, positioning his script in a no-win scenario between longtime fans and a slicker, more ADD modern audience. Mimic the original too closely, and he’d alienate a new generation that has little appreciation for slower, more deliberate storytelling. Reinvent the wheel, and you’ve got legions of lifelong fans who would cry “Sacrilege!” at the first break in canon. A prequel seems like a nice compromise on paper, introducing a host of new characters who could be dispatched by the iconic “thing” while not undermining the climactic Kurt Russell finale in the original. For those who never saw the first film, the stakes are just as high as with any other movie, while fans will have a blast seeing what led to the opening scene almost thirty years ago. However, since this isn’t a reboot, there aren’t a lot of surprises left in store, and unfortunately for the studio, you can’t generate good drama or tension if we know our protagonists can’t ultimately win.

It’s sad to think about what could have been. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is one of the best up an coming actresses out there, and giving her the chance to follow in the footsteps of Linda Hamilton or Sigourney Weaver and giving her a sci-fi franchise (in this case a sequel would have been preferable) where she could really embody a strong female character would’ve anchored the ensemble and given the movie a fighting chance to resonate. As it stands, she makes a very shallowly written part worth watching, and it’s a feat that portions of the film work at all. Joel Edgerton also gets the short end of the stick here, being groomed as a Kurt Russell stand in with his quick trigger finger and manly facial hair, but not having enough emotional meat to sink his teeth into. If Warrior is any indication, this an actor to watch, and it’s frustrating that the best follow up his agent could manage was a half baked retread of great 80′s sci-fi. He could have a Tom Hardy type of career, he just needs to get some more good indie material under his belt first.

From a pacing standpoint the film doesn’t wear out its welcome, but it also doesn’t stick around long enough to be impactful either. Where the original grew its menace over a long buildup, the new film gives up the goods way too early, resorting to some dodgy CG for our first introduction to the alien creature. There’s something to be said for a less-is-more approach, and where the first film used its budget constraints to create some great atmospheric horror a la Alien, here we see entirely too much of our titular baddie, and it becomes more disgusting than terrifying very quickly. There’s also the fact that the film is being produced so far after its source material, and feels the need to ape monster conventions that have come into existence in the intervening decades. Carpenter’s Thing didn’t split off into centipede type organisms that then ran amok in the base, and though the creepy crawlies are gross, and potentially terrifying to the more squeamish viewer, they don’t maintain a threat level that would smooth over the movie’s glaring problems in tone and lack of character development.

The results are, as expected, a pale comparison to the iconic source material and a case-study in what is wrong with the modern Hollywood system. Did The Thing really need a prequel? No, but the producers are hoping, perhaps rightly so, that nostalgia alone might be enough to get you into the theater. Morbid curiosity may not seem like the best audience motivator for a wide release, but it does equal dollar signs, and I can see the movie becoming a modest hit if its marketing rubs enough people the right way. Once you leave the theater, you’ll be wondering what it was that you really spent your money on, and though it’s not offensively bad, it still joins the ranks of the painfully disappointing. Keep the nostalgia in check, and use your better judgement. Does a remake of The Thing really sound like a good idea to you?