If you haven’t seen John Carpenter’s The Thing, please see that before seeing this movie. Since this is a prequel you don’t really need
to see it to understand the story, but I feel as though it would be ruined by
seeing this one first. It is a classic
horror movie, and was amazing effects for its time, and really the new The Thing is the same basic film, just
prettied up with modern effects. And
that is not a bad thing! The movie is
still terrifying and Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. (don’t ask me to say that out loud) made it his own
with the monster effects and the kills, and it will still get you to jump out
of your seat several times.
The story starts out with a discovery in Antarctica (when
has that ever ended well?) and following that a grad student paleontologist
Kate Lloyd is flown down to investigate, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Why they just flew down a grad student and
not a full blown paleontologist is beyond me, but a woman is something that
John Carpenter’s The Thing didn’t
have, so this adds another wrinkle to the whole proceedings. This movie also employs a tactic that few
horror movies can pull off: the double jump scare. This involves two jump scares back to back, a
fake-out followed by what you were expecting.
It’s actually used pretty well, but the anticipation was killing me by
the time what I was expecting actually happened. This scare was early on, and after that it
was a pretty consistent killing off of the characters as things went on.
The director Matthijs also found a different way to identify
who wasn’t a creature in this film, so that helps keep things slightly
different than the original. He was a
bit boxed in by the original, however, since John Carpenter’s The Thing had Kurt Russell and others
investigating this camp, so what they found had to eventually be put in place
by the events in this movie. It’s actually
done really well, especially by the post-credits piece you can predict if you’ve
seen the original. And I do have to say
that the creature effects are pretty disgusting, so if you are easily nauseated
by gruesome stuff, this might not be your movie. It’s not as bad as some of the Saw or Hostel movies, but it’s still pretty messed up.
If you are looking to be terrified this Halloween season,
you could do worse than The Thing. This movie is very freaky, and will keep you
jumpy for several hours after seeing it.
It is also very true to the original, so you won’t walk out disappointed
if you’ve seen the original. So if you
want to see a classic style monster movie using new age special effects, then The Thing is the movie for you.
John Hackert is a
columnist and saw this movie during the day so he didn’t leave the theatre in
the dark.
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