If you’ve visited this website within the past couple of years, you might have seen my article exclaiming my love for John Carpenter’s The Thing from 1982. It is arguably the best horror remake of all time, with timeless special effects, a dooming tone, and an unsettling atmosphere that makes the film nearly flawless, in my opinion. Despite it being a box-office bomb when it came out, and nearly destroying Carpenter’s career, it garnered a cult following over time through home video and is now recognized as a horror classic. As is decreed by the gods and the greedy ghouls in Hollywood, any popular film franchise must be remade, whether the fans want it or not. But wait! It’s not a remake! It’s a prequel! You know, a prequel with the same flipping title!

Remake or prequel, argue whatever you think it is. This movie sucks.

Pros

Some creature designs look okay

Cons

Digital effects of 2011 are nothing in comparison to the practical effects of the ‘80s
Boring and devoid of tension or personality
A cast without charisma
The Thing behaves in ways that don’t make sense for a sentient being trying to survive or escape, indicating the filmmakers did not know how to use it effectively as a plot device
Completely useless movie that doesn’t deserve to exist

Plot & Thoughts

This remake of a remake is actually a prequel, as far as the plot is concerned. This is a fact that already irritated me back when the film came out. It has the same title, yet the events of this film lead up to the events of John Carpenter’s movie. Apparently, just dropping his name from the title itself is enough to differentiate the movie to the filmmakers that they would feel a subtitle isn’t necessary. If you’re going to actually have a plot that is different from your source material, give your movie a different name! John Carpenter shortened The Thing from Another World to just The Thing. Why not call it The Thing from Space? Or The Thing that Has No Soul? Or The Thing that We Made Just to Make Some Money Without Trying Very Hard? Call it anything so people know that this is supposed to be a movie that is part of the timeline of events from the ‘80s!

Regardless of naming convention nonsense, this movie follows the events of the Norwegian science facility in Antarctica that originally found the crashed spacecraft of the Thing and inevitably set it loose. While just a barren facility with dead people in Carpenter’s classic, this facility is filled with Norwegians for the Thing to eventually merge with or kill. There also happen to be a couple of Americans there (Thank Goodness!), so there’s a reason for everyone to be speaking English and I don’t have to read subtitles like I would for some filthy foreign film! Harumph! It’s also a good thing that the Americans are here because they’re the ones who are going to have all the best ideas on how to handle the Thing. These dumb Norwegians would surely be hopeless without them.

Of course, I’m being facetious about everything, but if I wasn’t being playful in my review in any way, it would just be a long rant about how pointless this movie is. When this worthless premake/dequel was announced over a decade ago, I gagged in my mouth at the thought of it and vowed not to see it. Obviously, I broke that vow recently because I matured enough to understand why remakes exist and to see if my expectations were low enough to give it the benefit of the doubt—I have been watching a lot of horror remakes recently anyway. Apparently, I was spot on with my opinion of the movie without having seen it, because I still cannot bring myself to like much of anything about it.

First of all, that cast lacks any charisma. There’s no Kurt Russel equivalent or even anyone who could replicate the gravitas of one of the supporting roles. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a pretty lady in the sausage-fest science facility—there’s only one other woman present—but she fails to make herself any more compelling of a character than the rest of the disposable body bags. There’s no interesting dialogue or banter. There’s no chemistry of the cast to captivate you or give you the sense that these people all knew and trusted each other before the Thing arrived. It’s just a facility filled with forgettable people. There are a lot of them, for the sake of a high body count. And a lot of them are too pretty and clean to be believable as a bunch of people trapped in Antarctica, unable to go outside and exercise. Regardless, I honestly can’t remember anyone.

Obviously, the effects were never going to be as good as the 1980s movie. While they aren’t as atrocious as they would have been had the movie been made a decade earlier, they haven’t aged well either. This is the problem with computer-generated effects. As the years go by, they keep improving and making movies with digital effects that were impressive at the time, but now look worse and worse. When you watch Jurassic Park (without any recent touchups) the puppets and animatronics still look amazing, while the CGI looks like blurry garbage. When this version of The Thing was announced, I knew there would be minimal practical effects, if any. They actually were going to use practical effects at first, but then opted for CGI to save money and time. The gross-out practical effects of The Thing are pretty important to the overall experience because it’s supposed to be disturbingly alien to the point of revulsion. With CGI, the filmmakers could get even crazier with the creatures and make it more disturbing and wild, sure. But all that really changed in a significant way was the fact that the Thing was faster because it wasn’t limited to the movement of an animatronic or mounted to a machine. Some designs were okay, but nothing new, interesting, or disturbing ever showed its face.

The fact is, this movie lacks any sort of personality or tension. There are too many characters for the sole purpose of just killing them off. We never spend enough time with any of them to feel any attachment to them—aside from Mary Elizabeth Winstead, which doesn’t matter anyway because we know that everyone has to die by the end in order for it to be a functional prequel. At no point did I have any of the same excitement or interest that I have every time I watch Carpenter’s film. There’s no compelling soundtrack. The direction of the film lacks any personality to give you the sense of isolation, loneliness, and paranoia that is ever prevalent in the ‘80s movie, despite recreating many of the same camera shots from Carpenter’s movie. The motivations of the Thing itself run counter to its logical intentions established in Carpenter’s movie, to the point that it actually makes sure it doesn’t escape Antarctica just so we could have a moment for the trailer. There are countless other problems I have with the movie that I could go into greater detail about, but the review would just go on and on.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

As I knew I would back in 2011, I strongly dislike this movie. It met my incredibly low expectations to a T. Everything that made John Carpenter’s film a horror masterpiece is missing here. It took over ten years for curiosity to finally get the better of me and to break my vow never to see this mediocre piece of trash. While I don’t regret my decision, as I can finally know for myself that it is as bad as I thought it would be, it still pains me to think that there are people out there who might see this movie before the 1982 remake, or the original film that inspired John Carpenter in the first place, which is another horror masterpiece. If you or anyone you know has never seen any of the Thing movies, do not start or even end your viewings with this one.

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