In director John Carpenter’s masterpiece of contemporary horror cinema entitled “The Thing,” we’re told that not only is the beast of the film weak, thus forced to take on the shape and form of humanity, but it also acts as an independent species. So while we think we may be seeing one monster, there’s an off chance this thing is really multiple organisms struggling for survival by hiding in our skin. There’s no one true thing in the Carpenter film, possibly multiple or even dozens of monsters hiding in our skins that we’re killing off one by one who continue regenerating. The wholly unnecessary “The Thing” now in 2011, completely shatters such a thesis by informing us that yes there’s one thing, and yes, this is what it looks like. Within the first fifteen minutes of the film.
“The Thing” is a polar opposite to John Carpenter’s film, because rather than taking from Carpenter’s lesson book and re-thinking the way we approach this source material, it instead wants to completely destroy any and all mystique and enigmatic properties inherent in Carpenter’s eighties juggernaut. There’s no suspense, there’s no tension, there’s zero subtlety, and there’s absolutely zero debate on what the thing is or what it looks like after watching this. What further elicits my argument that “The Thing” completely destroys all foundation of mystery or suspense is that the film casts over a dozen or so characters in the film. All of whom are there to be killed and nothing more. When is Hollywood going to learn that bigger, faster and louder isn’t always better? In “The Thing” from Carpenter’s eyes, we knew the characters. By the first viewing we knew who MacReady was. We knew who Windows was. We knew who Blair was. With “The Thing” 2011, I can’t name a single person except for the main character Kate.
And that’s only because I harbor a mean crush on Mary Elizabeth Winstead. No character in this obvious remake posing as a prequel stands out among the rest. There’s no iconic individual. There’s no charismatic supporting player. Thus we can’t form a personal relationship with these people who are doomed to become chowder for The Thing. And yes, the producers behind this film do subscribe to the theory that loud is scary and faster is scarier thus everything blasts from its port way, and explodes from its doorway, and slices past subtlety. When the thing is unleashed upon us it doesn’t slither away in to the darkness ready to pounce on an unsuspecting individual. It literally explodes from its ice tomb in to an above floor of the research center its inhabited. This is the monster we’re told in the 1982 film is so weak from nearly dying in its crash that it has to hide in our skin to protect itself because it can’t fight back? This is the monster that rather than fighting the Norwegians takes on the form of a dog and runs away in to the arms of other victims hoping to be protected?
Did the writers even research Carpenter’s original film before writing this? No, the monster is all powerful and nothing but a rather symmetrical menace who stomps and claws its way past its victims posing the question of why it needs to hide behind us? Why does it when it can perfectly destroy a group of victims with its tendrils and tentacles? What made The Thing so horrific is was the sense of perversion behind the monster design. It invaded us. It invaded our personal space. It became us. And when it felt it necessary it destroyed the temples of our bodies to twist and distort in to something absolutely disgusting and atrocious. We felt debased by it. The Thing in this film feels like a random enemy from “Doom.” A stray beast from the shoot em up era of video games we just killed because it was rampaging after us for no rhyme or reason. And forget bringing the audience along with for the ride.
The scientists in this film figure out what the thing is long before we can, and do it better than the Americans in the 1982 film who, even after figuring out what the beast is are never sure what they’re exactly confronting. But no, within the first half hour they figure out “Yep, it’s an alien and it mimics us. Let’s roll!” So much for the intrigue and ambiguity Carpenter expanded on in his film. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. is a competent director and I’d love to see what he can do outside of the remake domain someday, as I don’t think “The Thing” is his gateway to Hollywood. This film is a colossal mess and a general spit in the face of everything John Carpenter set forth with his 1982 masterpiece that has yet to be mimicked and will never be mimicked. Like The Thing, this 2011 premake is nothing but a poor copy that should be blasted with flames. A piss poor copy of a rather unique and superior film, “The Thing” is an inept, poorly made and badly conceived mess of a horror film. Lacking in scares, tension, suspense, mystery, ambiguity, and so much more, this will go down in history as yet another remake with pure potential dripping from it that it failed to live up to.