Review: The Thing (2011)

The Thing (2011)
Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton

After ignoring The Thing’s theatrical debut this past October and procrastinating about viewing it as a rental, I finally succumbed to my curiosity over spring break. Being a fan of the 1982 version by John Carpenter, I fully expected to be disappointed by this new incarnation. Lo and behold, my expectations held true: the remake doesn’t hold a candle – let alone a flamethrower – to Carpenter’s version.

            

Directed by Matthijs Van Heijningen Jr. (Red Rain), Thing ‘11 is actually a prequel to the Carpenter version, and therein lies the film’s greatest strength. Fans of the 1982 masterpiece will chuckle quietly to themselves as they notice the little nods to the plot’s source material; it’s obvious that the filmmakers took special care with tiny details so that the events of this version line up with the story established by Carpenter’s version. Corpses fall precisely where they are found in Thing ’82, and it is admittedly quite creepy watching the dog-thing escape near the film’s end, seamlessly transitioning to the superior story of Thing ’82.

            

Additionally, the set-design and lighting are reasonably well done. Much like its predecessor, the interior sets of Thing ’11 are dark and spooky, their darkness broken only by the cold blues and whites of fluorescent lights that mirror the bleak tundra outside. Whether inside the compound or out in the snow, the movie does a good job in maintaining the feeling of utter helplessness established in Thing ’82. As a result, you never believe that the characters are safe, and expect a nasty surprise at every corner.

Unfortunately, the film’s careful focus on mise-en-scene is derailed by the fact that Thing ’11 is a fairly mundane horror-thriller that can’t seem to establish its own identity. Many of Thing ‘82’s story elements, such as the cerebrally terrifying blood test, have been cannibalized and retreaded by Thing ’11. Instead of burning blood with a heated wire, the protagonist Kate Lloyd – played with robotic zeal by Scott Pilgrim’s Mary Elizabeth Winstead – grabs a flashlight and checks each person’s mouth for fillings to determine which person is actually the monster; the logic behind this being that the creature can’t replicate non-organic material. A decent twist, but the tension is destroyed by the absurdity of Kate dutifully checking teeth like a militant dentist searching for rogue cavities rather than hunting for a shape-shifting alien. “So, I’m gonna die because I floss?” asks Finch, a camp resident who’s sarcasm reflects the cartoonish feel of what is supposed to be a pivotal scene.

            

Speaking of Kate Lloyd, I applaud the effort by Thing ‘11’s makers in having a female protagonist who isn’t subjected to a barrage of breast jokes and sex scenes. Kate eventually becomes hell-bent on alien-slaying, and her gusto would make Ellen Ripley beam with pride. Beyond the character’s resolve and sexual neutrality, however, there is little to nothing of value at all; Kate’s dialogue is hardly engaging and Ms. Winstead’s acting is as stiff as a frozen cadaver. In light of the film’s place as a cultural product of the twenty-first century, it seems as though Thing ‘11’s filmmakers failed to create a convincing analogue for the R.J. MacReady character in Thing ’82. Kate Lloyd is an ambitious, intelligent young woman, but Ms. Winstead isn’t convincing in the role. While the MacReady character isn’t exactly Charles Foster Kane, Kurt Russell certainly fits the role well enough to disappear into the character, something that Winstead couldn’t deliver. Granted, the writing was rather abysmal, so it may not have been completely her fault.

            

The creature itself constantly teeters on the edge of acceptability and complete ridicule. The CGI Thing looks like something out of a bad computer game and the fact that it is seen so often and clearly throughout the film is detrimental to its terrifying nature; the main reason why the Carpenter monster is so damned scary was because you hardly ever see it in its true form, and when you do, the disgustingly contorted look of its ever-changing body flash-freezes you into a glacier of terror - and this monster is actually a puppet, mind you. While on the topic of embarrassing CGI, one scene involving the Thing attacking some researchers on a helicopter is especially laughable: as the chopper spins out of control, the CGI model is so awful that it wouldn’t be out of place in a SyFy channel b-movie.

The sub-par CGI of The Thing's (2011) titular monster.

For the gore-hounds, Thing ’11 does deliver a moderate amount of blood and viscera. One scene has a hapless researcher being ripped off of his feet and whisked away under a porch, resulting in an explosive splash of hemoglobin and stomach-turning pain-shrieks. Later, Kate exposes another researcher as an imposter, prompting a revolting transformation from human form into a gaping, incisor-laden mouth with legs. The special attention to exorbitant gross-outs is where Thing ’11 could have succeeded as a semi-passable sci-fi horror flick, but there is too little of these transformations and too much terrible CGI to pull it off.

One can argue that it’s a bit unfair to compare the new Thing to the superior Carpenter version; after all, aren’t remakes meant to be aimed at a new, younger audience? I say that since it is billed and shot as a prequel and not a remake, then comparisons are not only fair, but also necessary. Thing ’11 is an admitted addition to the canon established by Carpenter’s Thing twenty years ago, and it’s a rather poor addition at that.

[Revised on 4/26/12]