The Thing (2011): A Lot to Love

John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is one of the few perfect films in the history of cinema. I’ll fight you to the death on that. Maybe not to the death, since that seems (only slightly) extreme, but you should know on my All-Time Top 5 List it accounts for three slots.

The original starred Kurt Russell as a helicopter pilot in an Antarctic research station, stranded thousands of miles from civilization. A series of events bring a visitor into their camp, and very quickly it devolves into a strange (and then gruesome) mystery; somewhere between Agatha Christie and Dario Argento. The claustrophobic yet infinitely expansive setting, the stellar cast, the hauntingly sparse Ennio Morricone, a script by Bill Lancaster (who other than this ONLY made Bad News Bears), and creature effects the likes of which had never been seen and will never be seen again… it’s just the perfect storm. It kept all the right things in the shadows (which allowed it to age as well as it has) and showed you all the things you didn’t want to see. It also has the kind of ending which perfectly defined the Cold War and continues to force discomfort into every viewing.

Friends found it strange when my first Blu-Ray purchase was a film from the early 80’s. Those people are uneducated Philistines, and I have ex-communicated them from my life.

Now, due to some unholy alliance, first time director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.  and Strike Entertainment have taken my first love in horror and reinvented it for the modern cinema. And how pissed off am I at the disservice they’ve done to that most holy of properties?

Uh. I really like it.

It’s not going to steal any of those three spots in my Top 5, but there’s a lot to love here. First, Strike are the same producers who pulled off the awe-inspiring Dawn of the Dead remake in 2004 and Children of Men in 2006, so if there’s anyone who understands how pristine pacing and the complimenting of violence vs. tense character moments can pay off, it’s them.

Second, they could’ve gone the route of non-stop jump scares and over-the-top chase sequences, but they still showed greater restraint than I feel most other studios would have allowed for a remake of this sort. That’s not to say there’s not A LOT of the monster in the film, cause there is. Probably six times more than in the original. This comes with some trade-offs. You lose a lot of the intrigue and second guessing from the original; the events occurring in the shadows that even on repeated viewings you cannot confirm. You also have to witness a lot of CGI, which seems blasphemous when redoing one of the last great practical effect creature features, but this also opens up exciting possibilities. In the world of comics and video games, many different arrangements and interpretations of the Thing’s variations have been explored, and there’s truly memorable configurations brought to the screen here. It just seems like a different monster.

But the best choice made, and easily the most widely criticized, is the decision to make this film as a prequel to The Thing ’82, which was itself an implied sequel to the 1951 version.  (Yes, we’ve been exploring this same little narrative patch for more than sixty years. I think that shows how effective this story can be at getting under your skin.) The prequel choice allows for a rare combination of alternative choices and rigidly structured outcomes, forcing it to go without re-using narrative turns from the ’82 version while simultaneously adding backstory to small details that will undoubtedly make future viewings of Carpenter’s version carry greater weight. In particular, I’m thinking of a few small props and items that could have easily been overlooked, but a degree of care on the part of clever filmmakers made sure every lesser fan-boy instinct I felt was satiated. They could have gone further, mayhaps digging deeper into the mythology, but the attempts given were more than enough to prove they genuinely loved the source. (Speaking of loving the source, have a read of this, if you dare: Clarkesworld Magazine  Obviously, Spoiler Alerts.)

Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim) plays some type of anthropological scientist, but none of that really matters, since her inclusion seems to be just to break up the sausage party that keeps happening on the South Pole. She plays the role with the best of her ability, but the writing lets her down at every turn. What this film gains in action and visceral violence, it obviously loses in character development. Every one of the men in the original had a distinct personality and approach to the situation, while the new version fails to even develop its lead, nor her connections to several of the other cast members. I spent the first two/thirds of the film trying to determine who they expected me to link her with romantically, and wound up preferring the only character who couldn’t speak English. One character, who I think I was supposed to like, meets a truly horrific end, but I was far too involved in the special effects to worry about missing his one note personality until much later. It doesn’t speak well for a film when I say it “has no one competing with Wilford Brimley.”

It has an ending that plays for safety, then plays for God knows what, then plays for cross-film continuity; so that was a bit of a mess. That safety is off-putting. The Thing ’11 doesn’t shy away from gore, but it does shy away from the inherent moments that might have been most disturbing to its audience, and a willingness to play ball so far from the safe zone is exactly why everyone still loves The Thing ’82.

If we don’t remember The Thing ’11, that’s okay. It’s far above par and there’s much worse you could choose to borrow from. Mostly, I think you’ll wind up seeing it because, as Scott Weinberg pointed out, it is one of only two horror films releasing this October.

That’s almost as depressing as dying alone in Antarctica.