THE THING

*1/2 (out of ****)

 

There are some remakes that make you question the existence of a the Hollywood film industry and who these people are that run it. However, sometimes a remake comes along and you can’t help but think “that’s actually going to be pretty badass.” The latter is exactly how I felt when I first heard about the prequel for The Thing. The kid inside me did a backflip when I saw the new trailer. The trailer nailed how I felt the film should be.

I love the original movie. I realize there are flaws to it, but it’s truly a fun movie. Going into this new one I was so on board. I wanted to love this movie right away for two reasons. One is the obvious reason of it being a remake of The Thing. And two, because I wanted to finally see Hollywood nail a remake/re-imagining. The past five years has really let me down as far as remakes, and it would be nice to see a great one.

Right away, the opening title got me. It just hits like a classic 80s thriller, and I was even more on board than before. From there on the film only had to not lose me. However, that is what the film slowly did over the next 100+ minutes. It’s slowly made me give up on it for a few different reasons.

To start, The Thing lacks what I call the “Jaws Effect.” Jaws is so awesome because it builds up to the shark. You don’t see the shark until way deep into the movie, thus causing much suspense. There is virtually no build up the alien in The Thing. About 20 minutes into the movie BANG the alien bursts out and starts running around. About 10 minutes later Mary Elizabeth Winstead figures out almost every detail about this creature. I was left with very little suspense in this movie.

Even the classic test of who’s actually human, which is recreated from the first movie with a slight twist, is completely interrupted right in the middle. Again no suspense.
Another lacking aspect is character. You are LITERALLY given no background on any character whatsoever. Therefore, I could give a shit whether or not anything happens to anyone. I mean, you kind of care for Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character because it’s made clear she’s the protagonist, but other than that, I don’t care. Basically 8+ people are running around and I could care less what happens to like 6 and 1/2 of them.

The film is also CG heavy, and the best part of the original is the amount of on-camera effects. I just feel like this film goes against the original in so many ways. The original was a classic 80s thriller, whereas, this new one is just a cheap 2011 attempt at horror.

All that said the film still had its moments. The first face splitting scene is totally badass and some of the deaths are pretty cool as well. And the ending, bridging the two movies, was really well done. It’s just not enough to make up for how dull the whole rest of the movie was.

Over all this movie started with me totally on board and slowly but surely lost me. -KM

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