Some days, I really regret ever deciding to start reviewing stuff.
Despite not being my favourite genre, horror has certainly made quite the impact with cinema, hasn't it? Not only as a means of scaring the shit out of people, but also pushing the rating system further so that audiences can get the chance to truly experience something scary. Because of this, films like "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" were all possible and are recognised as some of the best horror films of all time... at least, before being bogged down by shitty sequels and remakes.
However, in recent years, namely in the last decade or so, Hollywood seemed really keen on releasing shitty horror film after shitty horror film as a means of making a quick buck, never really putting any thought into them and introducing new troupes for people to despise or resurrecting old troupes that disappeared because of how people hated them. A lot of this can be blamed on constant remakes by companies like Platinum Dunes, where they just simply take the original film, repeat the same damn story, water down what people loved about the original and add in needless elements that ultimately make the remakes terrible. "A Nightmare on Elm Street"? It's now a mystery movie with Freddy Krueger as a paedophile. "Friday the 13th"? Ignores that Jason's mum was the original killer to focus on Jason and introduces two completely different yet equally annoying groups of teens for the body count. "Halloween"? Michael had a rough childhood that takes up 45 minutes of running time and then the rest of the film is just a lazy rehash of the original with none of the class.
Why do I bring this up? Well, because I have a feeling that today's film was intended to be a remake before they changed their minds and decided to just make it a non-canon prequel. That would definitely explain it's bizarre identity crisis.
So without further ado, here are the 3 clues from last time:
1. It's another prequel.
2. It's another horror movie.
3. It's a prequel to my all-time favourite horror movie.
Again, I hesitate to call it a prequel. Number 2 on The Shit List is:
"The Thing"!
What?! No! The other one!
... The OTHER other one!
... That's the video game!
... For Christ's sake, WE DID "FANT4STIC" ALREADY!!
Excuse me a minute while I "talk" with my editor.
Sorry about that, just had to introduce my foot to my former editor's face. Still, just show me the most recent one:
THAT'S it, the 2011 version!
This mutated abomination of ass was the first film to be based on the John Campbell Jr novella "Who Goes There?" since John Carpenter took a stab at it in 1982.
The basic story for every version is that a crew in an isolated research outpost has an alien creature stalking them, picking each one off until there is only a handful left. Despite having a similar premise, the first adaptation of the story, "The Thing from Another World", is a loose adaptation as it is set in the North Pole as opposed to the Antarctic and the biology of the creature is vastly different, being a plant based organism that reproduces itself with seed pods within it's own body.
The John Carpenter remake, "The Thing", however, was a more faithful adaptation of the book, being based in Antarctica and the creature more akin to how it operated in the book. To summarise, the alien can absorb organic life forms and imitate them on a cellular level, thus allowing it to hide among the humans and subtly infect everyone as it tries not draw attention to itself. This works to great effect in the film, as the core themes of paranoia, tension and mistrust all come down to whether or not the people at Outpost 31 can be trusted not just be each other, but by the audience as well. Even the protagonist, MacReady played by Kurt Russell, could be an unreliable narrator as he is put in positions where most of the team don't trust him.
"The Thing" is easily my all-time favourite horror movie; not just because of the beautiful practical effects by Rob Bottin or even the fact that Kurt Russell is in it, but because it creates an unsettling, frightening atmosphere and none of the characters are ever presented as being stupid or doing something right for all the wrong reasons. One of the troupes I despise in horror films is when the protagonist does something so unexpectedly dumb, thus ruining any appreciation for the character and weakening the overall experience. This film is truly something you have to see for yourself if you're in for a good scare. Hell, I love the film so much that I did an assignment for a University module where I had to propose a story that could work in both theatre and film and based it around this movie; I love the film that much!
If only the "prequel" didn't share the same fucking name, thus confusing people into thinking that it's a remake! What the hell, Hollywood?!
This version of the story is the events that happened before the creature got to Outpost 31 as a husky. Specifically, with the group of Norwegians who were unintentionally responsible for thawing the creature out and letting it loose on the people in the base. Initially, not a bad premise for horror film and could potentially stand on it's own without being compared to the original.
But see, here's the problem; it's basically trying too hard to BE the original film, right down to, as I said before, sharing the same name for profitable value.
Just to give you an idea of how you can lose investment with your characters in the first minute; the first few lines of dialogue is an incest joke spoken in Norwegian about a little boy fucking his grandmother... let that sink in.
Still, the Norwegians enlist the help of palaeontologist Kate Lloyd... an AMERICAN palaeontologist, I might add. Little side question; did Norway really not have ANY palaeontologists? Furthermore, why would Norwegians share sensitive information and findings about a crashed alien ship with someone who falls under American jurisdiction? And what about reporting their findings to another Norwegian institute for science about what they found? Hell, why do they need a palaeontologist to begin with? They study the corpses of fossilised creatures that went extinct before human civilisation began to bloom. These people literally have no reason to include a palaeontologist in studying an alien creature. For fucks sake, when she gets there and they try to take a sample, she tries to sway them from doing this and finding an alternate solution, but they just brush off her concerns, telling her not to correct them in front of everyone else. Thus, Kate's role in this film, despite being the main protagonist, is completely superfluous.
And just like that, you can automatically guess one of the main problems with this film:
EVERYONE'S A FUCKING IMBECILE!!!!
And I do mean everyone. Never does anyone in this film, despite all of them having some form of scientific expertise, make a single rational or logical decision, instead relying on doing the obviously wrong things. As stated before, one the scientists, Dr Sander, wants to drill into the block of ice containing the creature to get a sample... and no-one but Kate tries to stop him. Literally NO-ONE! None of them throw out the possibility of alien disease, or finding another way to collect a sample that in no way damages the creature, or better yet, LEAVE THE FUCKING THING ALONE IN THE PLATEAU OF ANTARCTICA!!
I'm sorry if I just seem like I'm harping right now, but I feel it's important to point this bullshit out. Why? Because one of the aspects that endeared people to the Carpenter version was how NO-ONE acted like an idiot! They acted and reacted exactly how anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together would act in this situation. They rationalised, they discussed their plans and, most importantly, they used their brains! I can't say that about anyone in the not-prequel, as all of them make the most basic and obvious of errors when they should know better. Thus, we don't care when one of them is revealed to be the Thing or when any of them dies, as we had no investment in what they had to offer due to their lack of competence or logical thinking.
But it's not just the people; the creature is an utter idiot too! Remember how in the Carpenter version the creature was quiet, took it's time and only revealed itself when it had no choice or was exposed? Well, throw that out the window, as this creature is loud, draws attention to itself and constantly reveals itself over and over for no fucking reason! And I do mean no reason. There's a point after the creature is first discovered once it consumes Norwegian number 15 and is burned to a crisp where a group of people are on the helicopter and leaving the base for a medical base, with one of the people on board being the creature. All the creature has to do is just sit there and do nothing, as it's now escaping with no-one the wiser. And what does it do?
Well, along with showing some piss-poor CGI, it does the exact OPPOSITE thing that any thinking, rational organism would do! Keep in mind, every single cell in the creature is a living organism, thus there's probably millions of brains inside of the creature. Does ANY of them think "You know, maybe we should just sit still and nothing"?! There! Villain wins by literally doing nothing!
Then again, this must of being thrown in there for the sake of showing off the gore and the frankly terrible CG. No joke, this is some of the laziest, most unconvincing CG I have ever seen. Namely because, none of this effects were meant to be fully CG. There's behind the scenes footage of the cast and crew reassuring the viewer that the effects are mostly practical with CG enhancements. But apparently, halfway through production, the executives all procrastinated at the same time, hit "fuck it" and told the team to just go all CG. Not only is that insulting to the hard work that was put into creating some of the puppets and animatronics of the creature, that's also insulting to Rob Bottin's work!
Keep in mind, Bottin spent 57 weeks at the studio just creating the creature effects and even slept at the studio to ensure that they were finished on time, to the point where after filming wrapped up, Carpenter had Bottin sent to the hospital for rest and to regain his health. Bottin was in his early 20's when he did these effects and they paid off immensely, as the practical effects still look horrifying to this day, with some of the most gruesomely creative monster designs of all time! Just look at the chest defibrillator scene and tell me it looks fake:
One last thing (pun unintended) I want to talk about is the consistency (or lack thereof) with the original film, namely with the timeline and how the creature operates.
As explained before, the creature absorbs other organic life, assimilates it and imitates it down to the cellular level, thus easily disguising itself among everyone else. However, with this film, a discovery is made where the Thing can't absorb inorganic material, such as metal fillings or plates, thus spits them out. And by shear fucking luck and coincidence, almost EVERYONE at the base has metal fillings, thus the few without metal fillings or have porcelain fillings are automatically suspect.
To quote the ever talented and late George Carlin:
For one, how would Kate know if everyone has metal fillings? What if some of them just took really good care of their teeth on a day to day basis? Granted, I can't talk as I not only had porcelain fillings and metal fillings, but is also equipped with braces. However, that doesn't automatically mean that everyone in the whole world has had fillings. Second, Sander's fillings are porcelain... so why is he a suspect? Porcelain is not technically an organic compound, thus he should off the hook as, if he was the Thing, he would have them missing from his teeth!
But third, and probably the biggest issue, THIS WAS NEVER SOMETHING THE THING COULD DO!! Sure, it doesn't absorb inorganic material, but that doesn't mean that it would just spit it out! Because if that was the case, why didn't it spit out the defibrillators in the scene I just showed you? Why didn't it spit out the bullets it got hit with after being discovered for the first time during both films? Why didn't it spit out the metal plate in Norwegian number 15's arm after absorbing him?! Consistency; you suck at it!
But the even bigger issue is the film's total disregard for continuity. You already read the spoiler warning, so no way are you backing out now. In the films increasingly stupid and predictable climax, Kate ends up destroying the creature in the ship and goes off on her own in a snow cat to... wherever. But after that, the film cuts to the now destroyed base in the morning as the two remaining survivors hurry off to chase after the creature that's disguised as a husky in a helicopter, leading into the opening of the original film.
Wanna know how it completely disregards continuity? Because we already knew what happened to the creature and the space ship thanks to information found in the original film! Specifically, the Norwegian crew set thermite charges to try and uncover the ice covering the ship, only to end up destroying it before finding the creature frozen solid and bringing it back in the block of ice. In the not-prequel, the ship is destroyed from the inside, with a HAND GRENADE and suffers no other damage! How the fuck could they have ignored this easily remembered fact from the original, as it was essentially a reference to "The Thing From Another World"?! Why did this film ever get good reviews?! Why am I still talking about it?! Just END! END!!
Thank you, Tom Servo... again.
This film is an utter insult not only to everything the original film was about, but the impact that it had as well. The original may have been a critical and commercial failure when it was first released, but thanks to it gaining cult status through home video, it's now recognised as the brilliant horror film that it is. But even taking the original out the equation, the not-prequel is still a flaming pile of dogshit. The effects; terrible. The acting; monotone. The story; auto-pilot. The jumpscares; one too many. This was just a pain to sit through, and is easily the absolute worst horror film I've ever seen, and the fact that it shares the same name as my all-time favourite horror film just makes it even worse.
Overall rating; 0.5/10 (Painful).
And yet, with all of that, there is still one worse... here you go:
1. Released in 2010.
2. Based on a kids show.
3. Directed by one of Hollywood's biggest egomaniacs.
Til next time, this is Callum Lewis, the Media Man... and I only have one more to go.
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