The Thing

My first reaction on hearing that there was going to be a prequel to John Carpenter’s perennial 1982 classic The Thing was the same as that of all devotees of that film; “You gotta be fucking kidding” (boom boom). Matters weren’t helped on first viewing of the trailer which made it appear to be a straightforward remake of Carpenter’s film, including a similar sounding score. By this point The Thing community (now that’s an image) is up in arms at such a sacrilege. Then Matthijs van Heijningen Jr’s film is released and, wait for it, it’s half decent. Let’s clear up a few things first though. If you say it’s hypocritical to complain about Heijningen even going near Carpenters film as Carpenters film itself is a remake of Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World then you’d be wrong. Both Hawks’ and Carpenter’s films are sourced from John W Campbell Jr’s 1930’s novella Who Goes There?, but they are separate films. Next issue to clear up is that Heijningen’s film is a prequel, despite the somewhat suspicious looking marketing. OK, all that out the way, just why is this half decent? Well, it pretty much does use the template from Carpenters film, but whilst this film is vastly inferior it does at least match the 1982 effort on a number of occasions. Storyline wise we follow what happened to the Norwegian camp which is discovered in Carpenters earlier film. Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton are the recognisable faces amongst a plethora of non-descript names. Ah, easy “Thing” fodder you see. Heijningen is an unknown quantity behind the camera, but his direction is sharp and doesn’t hang around. For this film though, it’s all got to be about the screenplay and how it ties into Carpenter’s effort. I can’t be bothered to list everything here, but most things appear to match up. A smart new touch is introduced in the form of a teeth fillings test (in a clear homage to the famous blood test from the “first” film) and Eric Heisserer’s script keeps things to an coherent level, without upsetting any of “The Thing's” mythology (apart from one moment, mentioned in a bit). Hats off to both Heisserer and Heijningen though for the film’s best moment, an outrageous bit of mis-direction that rivals the chest caving scene from 29 years ago. Now the bad stuff. Winstead does well in the lead role and it’s a smart touch from Heisserer to have a female as the main protagonist after Carpenter’s famous all male outing, but her character doesn’t have enough development for us to engage with her. The same thing applies to the rest of the cast. Quite frankly, you don’t care who survives or not. The special effects are decent and are kept to the minimum unless the storyline requires, but they lack the bone-crunching look and feel of the animatronics of Carpenters film. Plus, they don’t make you want to retch like that film did (though you can argue if that’s a good thing or not!). As for “The Thing” mythology mentioned earlier, aficionados will be pretty miffed to see the creature “stalking” the protagonists at one point. Not quite the “creature that likes to hide” that we grew up with. The ending is a nice nod to the original in terms of its bleakness and ambiguity, but the scenes before then in the spaceship feel like they come from a lame episode of Star Trek or something. In the end though, this is a bit of fun and shouldn’t have fan boys spitting too much blood. The title of the film still makes no sense though. If this is a prequel to JC’s The Thing, then why the bloody hell is it called The Thing as well?

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict
Not as bad as first feared, but I doubt you’d ever watch it a second time. Rating: 7/10.