Horror Nerd Cinema Bonus: "The Thing"

First things first - I'm a huge fan of John Carpenter's seminal 1982 film "The Thing," still to this day the best horror remake of all time. It's a study in two things - (1) paranoia, and (2) the art of making an original film your own, as Carpenter took the VERY loose framework of the 1956 creature feature "The Thing From Another World" and transformed it into a tale of almost unimaginable internal and external threats. Yeah, the American research team in that flick may be up against a big, bad alien and everything...but it's the battles that they fight amongst themselves, playing a fascinating game of "who's the bad guy?" for much of the latter half of the film, that truly make the movie unforgettable, with Kurt Russell, Keith David and company giving the paranoia power with their great portrayals of the doomed characters. In short, it was awesome stuff in pretty much every way a horror film could be.

Having said that, the producers made an excellent decision to make this particular film a prequel rather than another remake. Yes, it's very similar to the 1982 film, but in one key way (which we'll be getting to later) it's very different. Is it perfect? No. Not by a long shot. But it's got good intentions (the producers realized early on that trying to do a straight-up remake of Carpenter's film was like "painting eyebrows on the Mona Lisa"), some solid performances, and good execution. I'll also give it this - see it in a packed house with a bunch of other dedicated horror fans and it's a damn fun time in theaters, not only for its numerous jump moments but for its connections to Carpenter's film that pop up every so often throughout the flick's 102 minute running time.

The movie opens with three Norwegian researchers traversing the Antarctic ice and eventually stopping when they find a strange frequency emitting from somewhere below the surface. As the signal becomes stronger, their vehicle suddenly crashes through the ice and unearths a gigantic otherworldly ship hiding underneath the ground - and nearby, frozen in the ice for many years, is a VERY unwelcome visitor...

Those who have seen the 1982 film know the basics - group of professionals on location in Antarctica have to deal with a malevolent alien being with the power to copy and hide in other living beings. That much is kept intact in this film, with a few characters immediately establishing themselves as our main draws. Our central character this time is Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), an American paleontologist brought to a Norwegian science station to assist with the unearthing of the alien body. For a movie of this nature, Winstead does a more than passable job playing the lead protagonist, smart when she needs to be in the middle chapters and not transforming into too overt of an ass-kicker by the finale. Really, what it comes down to is that I bought John McClane's daughter as a paleontologist. What more do you need to know?

Anyway, the operation to gather scientific information on the alien body is being led by Dr. Sander Halverson (Ulrich Thomsen), who fulfills pretty much every horror movie scientist cliche imaginable as he constantly makes dumb decisions about how the research must be continued despite the countless bodies cropping up around the proceedings. Yeah, it's a flaw, but Thomsen is so slimy and believable in the role that it can be forgiven. His assistant is Adam Goodman (Eric Christian Olsen), an American who draws the assignment of inviting Kate to the expedition. Rounding out the main batch of characters are the two helicopter pilots - Sam Carter (Joel Edgerton), a Vietnam vet with a penchant for Cleveland Cavaliers basketball, and Derek Jameson (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), the man who gets the honor of witnessing the alien burst out of its ice prison after being brought to the camp. Since these are the characters that I remembered by name after leaving the theater, this is where I'm stopping, but rest assured, there's a good half dozen additional technicians and miscriants lying in wait to serve as alien shapeshifter fodder.

Plotwise, here's all you need to know about "The Thing": Act One - scientists find alien and take it back to station, Act Two - All hell breaks loose as the alien kills a few of the scientists off and makes its replication powers be known, Act Three - Paranoia sets in and final confrontation. I'd like to make it seem more complicated than that, but really, what more is there to say? Fortunately, this is one aspect of this particular movie that works quite well; while it follows the same blueprint that the 1982 movie set, it actually creates its own style.

To me, this is where the film really shines. It's less about the games that the characters play with each other and the guessing game that goes on between the all-male cast (or mostly male, in the case of this one, as there is actually one additional female in the station apart from Winstead), because the movie smartly realizes that it can't top the Carpenter movie in this aspect. Instead, it carves out an identity fairly early on as a straight-up monster movie. Yeah, there is a section right before the s*** hits the fan at the 3/4 mark where we get a sabotaged blood test and some newfound makeshift ways of playing "who's got the alien bug?", but for the most part it's a fairly straightforward game of cat-and-mouse between the ever-crafty replicating alien and the arguing survivors, with the otherworldly life form taking on much more forms in this movie than it did in Carpenter's.

Does it work better than the 1982 film? No. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., the director of this film, is no John Carpenter. But it is different, and while different doesn't necessarily always mean good, the decision to not outright copy Carpenter's film was much appreciated by yours truly. Is it a scary monster movie, which is what the movie makes an honest attempt at being? In small doses, yes. Not only because I saw this one in one of the most state-of-the-art theaters I've ever set foot in, but also because it plays a few clever games of misdirection with its reveals; midway through the film, there is a sequence where a scientist who has incurred injuries in a fight with the creature is being helicoptered away. I'll leave it at that - suffice to say, the flick more than fooled me with this one.

More than anything, it was just good to see a modern take on a classic horror film that seemed to have tons of genuine reverence for the source material. Marc Abraham and Eric Newman, the AFOREMENTIONED producers who championed the prequel idea, weren't talking out of their ass; the script has plenty of respect for the rules that Carpenter laid out for his alien villain, the characters are set up in a fashion very similar to the original film (with scientists, pilots, and technical crew making up our cast of victims), the out-of-nowhere moments where the alien makes its presence known, the smooth transition into the events of that transpire at the American camp...hell, even that legendary Carpenter two-note score is kept intact. Compared to Rob Zombie's Sequel That Shall Not Be Named, where ANOTHER Carpenter score wasn't even used ONCE until the closing credits, this movie comes across as a tribute. Granted, you won't find anything new in the 2011 reiteration/prequel of "The Thing," but what's there is certainly a fun, engaging way to spend a couple hours in a theater. And it WILL whet your appetite to watch the immortal original. I know, because it's on in the background as we speak.

*** out of ****. A little predictable and familiar at times, but solid monster action, good performances from Winstead and Thomsen and plenty of love for Carpenter's classic are all pleasant surprises that make "The Thing" a solid outing at the multiplex for fellow horror nerds everywhere.