Movie Review – The Thing (2011)

This stuff does not take shape

Despite sharing the exact same title, The thing It is not a remake of the 1982 John Carpenter film. Nor, for that matter, is it related to the 1951 John Hawks film. The thing from another world. It is, in fact, a prequel to Carpenter’s film, taking place three days earlier and telling the story of the ill-fated Norwegian science team stationed in Antarctica. As long as he’s familiar with this story, it doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to figure out what’s going on. Carpenter’s film began with men in a helicopter shooting an Alaskan malamute that was not actually a malamute but a shape-shifting alien creature capable of absorbing and mimicking other life forms; this new movie, in its most basic terms, is about how the creature became a dog. I admit that sounds incredibly uninteresting, but there’s really no other way to put it.

Adapted from the story “Who goes there?” by John W. Campbell, Jr., The thing it has plenty of bloody monster effects to make us gawk helplessly, especially now that computers have taken the place of handy makeup effects. It has its fair share of breakout scares, though a lot of suspense is lacking, largely because there’s no real sense of mystery; there’s nothing about his nature or even his very existence that can surprise us, simply because Carpenter’s film already told us everything we needed to know. The only logical step would be to go back even further and examine how and why the creature left its home planet in the first place. But where’s the fun in that? Half the reason these movies are so scary is that we don’t know where he came from or why he ended up on Earth.

The story begins when a Norwegian scientist named Sandar Halversen (Ulrich Thomsen) recruits an American paleontologist named Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to join his team in Antarctica, which found a crashed alien spacecraft deep in a frozen cave. . They also found a vaguely insectoid creature, apparently dead, embedded in the ice. Under the orders of Halversen, who is clearly more motivated by conquest than actual scientific research, the creature is extracted and taken to the laboratory for analysis. A drill is used to obtain a tissue sample from the huge block of ice, which slowly, almost menacingly, drips. It isn’t long before the creature dramatically breaks free, sending everyone into a panic. Sharp tendrils grab the first victim below the camp, and we watch as this creature, whatever it is, begins the process of absorbing its prey before being torched alive with a can of gasoline and a flare.

But that is not the end. Kate looks at a blood sample from the victim under a microscope; she not only finds cells that belong to both the victim and the creature, both still very much alive, but she also discovers that the creature’s cells can adhere to and transform into the victim’s cells. She can mimic a life form at the cellular level. This means, then, that some or all of the people at the research station may not be what they seem. But how can Kate know for sure? Let’s just say that what they finally resort to is a woefully inferior variation of the tense blood test scene in Carpenter’s film.

Lots of characters are introduced, but almost all of them are as disposable as teenagers in a slasher movie. While this can play appropriately into the story’s inherent nihilism, it becomes problematic when the intent is to portray isolation and paranoia. Mental states, especially the most primitive and terrifying ones, are only convincing if we are really made to care about the people involved. The only character with an ounce of personality is Kate, but even so, she’s little more than a pale imitation of Lt. Ellen Ripley from the Alien films. This becomes especially apparent when he arms himself with a flamethrower and, like MacReady’s character in Carpenter’s film, he spends much of his time setting the alien creature on fire. The standout supporting actor is Joel Edgerton as an American pilot named Carter, though he doesn’t get much to do other than walk around with a wary look on his frost-covered face.

But what the film lacks in character development, it makes up for in style. With his bleak winter settings, dark corners, and sickeningly convincing special effects, he looks and sounds seriously good. My favorite shot is one in which the creature, just revealed in terrifying fashion, scurries up to a hapless scientist and melts into him. One of the results is an elongated head, each half showing the face of a different person. He talks about a split personality. Many critics weren’t kind to Carpenter’s film upon its initial release, though it has since built a following and earned its place as a horror classic. It’s hard to know for sure, as film tastes and attitudes are constantly changing, but I have a feeling that 2011 The thing it will not do so well twenty or thirty years later.