The Thing Review

John Carpenter’s 1982 cinematic masterpiece gets the prequel treatment and it’s a winner.

In 1982, director John Carpenter decided to remake a 1950’s science fiction classic (and a great one), called The Thing from Another World. That film told the story about an research site in the arctic that finds a crashed UFO buried in the snow not far from their base. They find the ship’s inhabitant outside the craft and encased in the ice. They bring it back to the base where it thaws and starts wrecking havoc. In Carpenter’s film, he went back to the original source material, the short story called “Who Goes There?”, and created a brilliant hybris of science fiction and horror. As the focus in that film is that the alien organism can assume the physical appearances of anybody it kills. That concept then creates a real suspenseful and ultimately frightening experience. That film upon its release flopped at the box office, however in years since it has developed a huge following and as of this day is considered a great remake. Now that film gets the prequel treatment and this new film truly does the original a lot of justice and comes out a huge winner.

Now to avoid any confusion as to the status of this new film, what you are seeing on the screen is a prequel to the 1982 film. This is a prequel NOT a remake as some would have you believe. This film picks up roughly four days before the events of the original. A Norwegian research base in Antarctica stumbles upon a signal that is coming from somewhere away from their base. What they find is a mysterious spaceship buried deep under the ice. Leading this expedition is Dr. Sander Halversen (Ulrich Thomsen), who then recruits a young and beautiful paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizebeth Winstead), to come and join the team in finding out more about this ship. While examining the ship they discover a creature frozen in the ice outside the ship. They take their finding back to their base so they can perform an experiment on it. But just when they think they have made the discovery of their careers, the creature breaks free from the ice and starts wrecking havoc on the base and the people there. Kate takes a DNA sample from the remains of one of the base menbers that was attacked and discovers that the creature is absorbing his body and is mimicking him from the inside out. This leads Kate to realize that everybody may not be human. This then creates a huge paranoiac feeling amongst everybody as to whether or not they can trust each other.

The flavor that was set by the tone of 1982 film is the sense of fear and paranoia. An alien creature can replicate itself into the physical appearance of anything that it kills. I mean what it not truly frightening about that concept. That is what made the Carpenter film so good. Now to be fair, one of the reasons that that film did not fair well when it was released was mainly due to its content. It was brutally compared to the Howard Hawks 1951 Another World, and was not given a fair shake. Plus there were a lot of complaints as to the overuse of really gross and graphic special effects that overpowered the film. As a result some of the real graphic scenes of that film were very hard for people to stomach. In this film they resort to CGI effects instead of the stop motion effects that were used in the Carpenter film. In my opinion however gross and graphic that film is, it is still cinematic masterpiece. I just would not recommend it for anyone who may be squeamish.

Now this film as said before is a huge winner all around. It is clear that the filmmakers really did their homework on the Carpenter film and kept their story from wandering off. They remain very respectful of the original to the point where they make want to go home and watch that film after coming home from seeing this one. They made a film that clearly is not trying to be better than the original. It pays an homage to that film and acts mainly as a companion. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the role extreamely well and does not try to be what Kurt Russell was in the other film. She is also supported by a great supporting cast of international actors. The effects part of the film is a fingernail short of different story. As mentioned before they substitute the stop motion animation effects in the original for CGI here. Some of the CGI here is easily seen and very obvious. But at the same time it is greatly effective to the horror aspect of the film and honestly serves the film well.

But when all is said and done it all comes down to this question, does this film serve the original film well and does it stand on its own. The answer is yes and yes. This prequel does its job in creating a well crafted “origin-like” story to the original. It is simply using the opening sequence of Carpenter’s film as a template and going back and saying this is what happened days before this. This film as said can stand on its own right next to Carpenter’s. It does not try to be superior to the original. It serves as a companion piece to that film. It does not reinvent anything nor does it change anything that was established already. I kid you not, there is no room for comparing this film with either Carpenter’s or Hawks’s at all. You can clearly see from watching them back to back they are truly different from each other. That is the case with this film as well. All in all this was a great film. Its scary, well acted, brillantlly paced, and very suspenseful. Once that sense if paranoia kicks in, there is no letting go and you will be on the edge of your seat for the duration.

My score ***1/2 out of ****

By Adam Miller
Movies Correspondent and Associate Producer, The RPM Show