Rated R for strong creature violence and gore, disturbing images and language
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen
Director: Matthijs Van Heijningen Jr.
Monster movies are inherently absurd, so it’s sage advice for a filmmaker to embrace a degree of preposterousness in their approach to such material. This updated version of "The Thing" is competent on a technical level but takes itself too seriously. It's an absurd movie that doesn't realize it's absurd.
The result is an unpleasant slog through a gory cinematic landscape. Of course John Carpenter's original had an excess of gore itself, but it was also endearingly over-the-top in its depiction of such carnage. Who can forget the scene where a doctor attempts to revive a team member with a defibrillator only to have the paddles thrust through the man's chest, which transforms itself into a carnassial mouth that clamps down, severing the doctor's arms and causing blood to spurt from the sockets and spatter the walls... gory, goofy, and most importantly, memorable. It's the horror movie equivalent of go big or go home. Genre artisans like Carpenter, Romero, and Craven understand this approach all too well.
This version contains no such memorable scenes, opting instead for an approach that attempts to explain in numbing detail certain sci-fi elements where a mere line of dialogue or two would suffice. There are a couple scenes that underscore this. One involves an unusually detailed autopsy of the alien creature where the scientists spell out precisely how the alien entity imitates its prey. Another comes late in the story and is set in the alien's "mother ship" where we're given a brief (and ultimately meaningless) glimpse into its possible origins. Filmmakers today, I think, often get too caught up in demonstrating veracity. Genre films don't need that; what they require is just enough credibility and a solid understanding of what makes those genres work.
It's not defined until the end credits whether the film is a re-telling, a sequel, or a prequel to the original movie. The story takes place in Antarctica in 1982. A team of Norwegian explorers has tracked a mysterious homing signal. It has led them to an extraterrestrial spacecraft of sorts that seems to have crash landed, became embedded in the ice and has rested untouched for what they estimate has been 100,000 years. That's not all. Several feet from the downed craft an alien body is located, and ultimately dug up.
Eager way beyond caution, Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) is bent on examining the alien remains in more detail. He enlists the help of a young but brilliant grad student named Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). She joins a vast team of Norwegian scientists and explorers whose mission is to obtain answers while carefully concealing everything they uncover. Also embedded with the team are a couple American chopper pilots (Joel Edgerton and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Halvorson makes the unwise choice to take a tissue sample from the frozen alien. It's only a matter of time before the alien breaks free from the ice. The scientists soon learn that the creature has the ability to clone living organisms by "consuming" their blood cells. They look and act like normal human beings, but are anything but. No one knows who to trust.
The trick to making a premise like this click rests in the distinguishable personalities of the characters. In Carpenter's original, the level of distrust was accentuated with the emergence of two central characters... Kurt Russell's steadfast MacReady and Keith David's suspicious Childs. Their vitriolic verbal accusations toward one another added flavor to such scenes where team members tested their blood by taking samples, then touching them with a hot needle to get a reaction. That kind of narrative ingenuity is missing here; the characters aren't diverse enough to gain our interest and the movie doesn't have as much fun with the idea of paranoia and seeking ways to circumvent it. Director Matthijs van Heijningen seems more interested in the quality of his special effects over genuine chills.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead has a cool, detached, no-nonsense demeanor that works well here. And Joel Edgerton embodies the kind of stoic persona we can get behind in this type of film. But no other characters are given much of a personality. This version is big on special effects but comes up short on genuine thrills. John Carpenter’s original wasn’t art, but the guy knew the genre, and knew enough to make it memorable.
* * out of * * * * stars
The result is an unpleasant slog through a gory cinematic landscape. Of course John Carpenter's original had an excess of gore itself, but it was also endearingly over-the-top in its depiction of such carnage. Who can forget the scene where a doctor attempts to revive a team member with a defibrillator only to have the paddles thrust through the man's chest, which transforms itself into a carnassial mouth that clamps down, severing the doctor's arms and causing blood to spurt from the sockets and spatter the walls... gory, goofy, and most importantly, memorable. It's the horror movie equivalent of go big or go home. Genre artisans like Carpenter, Romero, and Craven understand this approach all too well.
This version contains no such memorable scenes, opting instead for an approach that attempts to explain in numbing detail certain sci-fi elements where a mere line of dialogue or two would suffice. There are a couple scenes that underscore this. One involves an unusually detailed autopsy of the alien creature where the scientists spell out precisely how the alien entity imitates its prey. Another comes late in the story and is set in the alien's "mother ship" where we're given a brief (and ultimately meaningless) glimpse into its possible origins. Filmmakers today, I think, often get too caught up in demonstrating veracity. Genre films don't need that; what they require is just enough credibility and a solid understanding of what makes those genres work.
It's not defined until the end credits whether the film is a re-telling, a sequel, or a prequel to the original movie. The story takes place in Antarctica in 1982. A team of Norwegian explorers has tracked a mysterious homing signal. It has led them to an extraterrestrial spacecraft of sorts that seems to have crash landed, became embedded in the ice and has rested untouched for what they estimate has been 100,000 years. That's not all. Several feet from the downed craft an alien body is located, and ultimately dug up.
Eager way beyond caution, Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) is bent on examining the alien remains in more detail. He enlists the help of a young but brilliant grad student named Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). She joins a vast team of Norwegian scientists and explorers whose mission is to obtain answers while carefully concealing everything they uncover. Also embedded with the team are a couple American chopper pilots (Joel Edgerton and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Halvorson makes the unwise choice to take a tissue sample from the frozen alien. It's only a matter of time before the alien breaks free from the ice. The scientists soon learn that the creature has the ability to clone living organisms by "consuming" their blood cells. They look and act like normal human beings, but are anything but. No one knows who to trust.
The trick to making a premise like this click rests in the distinguishable personalities of the characters. In Carpenter's original, the level of distrust was accentuated with the emergence of two central characters... Kurt Russell's steadfast MacReady and Keith David's suspicious Childs. Their vitriolic verbal accusations toward one another added flavor to such scenes where team members tested their blood by taking samples, then touching them with a hot needle to get a reaction. That kind of narrative ingenuity is missing here; the characters aren't diverse enough to gain our interest and the movie doesn't have as much fun with the idea of paranoia and seeking ways to circumvent it. Director Matthijs van Heijningen seems more interested in the quality of his special effects over genuine chills.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead has a cool, detached, no-nonsense demeanor that works well here. And Joel Edgerton embodies the kind of stoic persona we can get behind in this type of film. But no other characters are given much of a personality. This version is big on special effects but comes up short on genuine thrills. John Carpenter’s original wasn’t art, but the guy knew the genre, and knew enough to make it memorable.
* * out of * * * * stars
