- Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
- October 10, 2011 (Universal City) / October 14, 2011 (US)
A graduate student is brought to a Antarctic research station to study an unusual find and soon must confront a menace from another world.
The Thing 2011 is a prequel to John Carpenter’s classic film version of Who Goes There? That’s some pretty big footsteps to follow in right there. The Thing 1982 is classic of terror and paranoia. This prequel film does well enough to pass the time in a satisfactory way but lacks much of the tension and paranoia of Carpenter’s legendary masterpiece.
One issue I draw with this film is the use of CGI over practical effects. Reportedly the minds at Universal decided that the practical effects used in this film needed to be covered up with CGI for reasons unknown. I will never understand it. There are bits and pieces of the original practical effects left in here and there but often they are obscured by subpar CGI that belongs in a videogame and not a theatrical release.
Important elements of an original film should appear in a sequel. It creates continuity. Those elements vary from project to project. Sometimes it is just the presentation of the story. Other times it is dress. In The Thing 1982 a significant element were those amazing practical effects. That head walking across the floor in ‘82 is classic!
Carpenter kept the shots tight in his film. They made you feel almost claustrophobic and uneasy. You felt like you were trapped in that research station. Here all the shots are wider than that film. You don’t get the feeling that you’re trapped. You are not pulled in.
There are some positive elements to this film. The Thing 2011 packs a few surprises and there are points where the misdirection by director Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr. works. But a lot of what happens in this movie mimics almost beat per beat scenes in the Carpenter film in much the same way as elements of Star Trek Into Darkness mimics Wrath of Khan. I know they used the scenes from the Carpenter film at the Norwegian station as the template for this movie. How what they found in that scene connected was purposely left uncertain. It would appear Heijningen and friends also used the larger Carpenter film as the template for the entire story and ended up with something close to better than most fanfiction.
I do like Kate Lloyd’s (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) realization that the creature can’t duplicate inorganic material. It is a good bit of deductive reasoning. Her examination is very nearly as effective as the MacReady blood test though not totally without its drawbacks as someone who has never had a filling (or in this film has porcelain crowns) would not be ruled in or out.
It was said Kate Lloyd was written to be like Ellen Ripley but she is no Ellen Ripley. Ripley stood strong and was authoritative and as capable as any character. Just because you have a woman in a movie like this does not mean she is the next Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor. It takes more that.
Kate Lloyd is just not engaging. She looks way too young and more importantly inexperienced to be as aware of and in control of the situation as she is. She just shows up and when things get weird is able to take charge more or less.
Dr. Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen), the doctor that convinces Kate to go to the research station, comes off as a jerk for the sake of being a jerk. He is arrogant because he needs to be arrogant for the sake of the story to move forward and not as part of his character. He was a plot device and not a character. If this was an attempt to make the character the way he was because of 80s sexism it fell rather flat.
The music by composer Marco Beltrami fails to equal the previous film. It doesn’t accentuate or elevate the narrative. It’s just there too cover-up moments of silence. The music of Thing 1982 is like bacon-it made things better. I’m not saying you need to use the original score, but it wouldn’t have hurt to use something evocative of that score rather than toss in a few notes of it at the end.
The Thing 2011 is not a bad movie, but it fails to live up to its predecessor. It’s not nearly as scary or intense and it does little to expand upon the original’s mythology. It goes through the motions and just ends up serviceable. I’ll give this an if you want.
