The Thing: review
Courier Film Editor Chris Binding reviews The Thing.
Hollywood has always had a poor track record of 80s remakes and over the last decade has dipped its fingers into everything from classic Nightmare on Elm Street series to Friday 13th, taking seminal classics and producing glossy and ultimately empty cash- ins. The next remake on the list, just in time for Christmas, is John Carpenter’s visceral sci –fi flick The Thing, an account of a parasitic alien infiltrating the crew of an Antarctic research station. Insistently labelling itself a ‘prequel’ rather than a remake, the narrative fills in the elliptic opening of Carpenter’s version by focusing on the discovery and subsequent mayhem of a research station after a Norwegian team excavate a frozen alien from an unidentifiable craft. With fan boys sharpening their pitchforks and huge pressure to match the craftsmanship and tension of the Carpenter classic, the well–executed effort unfortunately fails to surpass the original, emerging as a forgettable sub–standard monster movie.
Despite fitting the ‘prequel’ bill by focusing on the events of the Norwegian camp, the film defines itself from its source material, with self-referential nods including the opening helicopter shots, a new take on the famous ‘blood test’ scene and the ominous dog escaping from the camp that bridges the gap between remake and original. However significant changes including the casting of a female lead (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) adds a different dynamic that the extremely ultra–masculine original lacked, with female student Kate Lloyd fighting equally against male ego as well as destructive alien forces. However, the lack of detailed characterisation of myriad individuals in the densely populated camp makes a lot of the characters forgettable cannon fodder, with only a notable few performances creating any audience empathy along with a plodding pace that not even orchestral hits can resolve.
However, as the title fittingly suggests, the films centrepiece is the ‘Thing’ itself, with the mixture of computer generated and practical effects creating a truly horrifying creature. From a static form frozen in ice to its hybridised human manifestations, its various appearances are brilliantly creative with a playful body horror arising from fragile and surrealist contortions of the human body. On many occasions new set pieces have characters literally dropping to pieces and transforming into a fleshy mass of tentacles at incredibly unpredictable moments, re-producing the cold war paranoia and finger pointing that made the original so dramatically effective. However, the final act, involving an intense game of cat and mouse within the alien space ship is incredibly un–atmospheric with sigh inducing clichéd moments, including slow–motion grenade throwing and a overtly nihilistic subversion of the originals ending.
Despite the ground breaking effects and impressive set–pieces, The Thing unfortunately remains a shadow of its 1982 source which, like the narratives alien, can replicate to a certain extent, before revealing the disgusting horror underneath. Not to say the film is horrifically bad, but as the original has sustained its own reputation for the last thirty years a remake will always bear scathing comparison. The Thing could undoubtedly stand alone as a functional, entertaining horror but approaching the film with any affinities to the charm of John Carpenter’s classic will produce nothing but chronic disappointment.
