Movie Review: 'The Thing' is a Prequel Worth the Wait

While prequels don’t usually share the same title as their filmic predecessors, this Thing is part of The Thing continuum. It’s nestled in the three days leading up to John Carpenter’s 1982 version which is based more on the novella “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell and less on the Howard Hawkes attributed The Thing from Another World from 1951. The thing about this prequel is, if you’ve seen any of the “originals” you have a pretty good idea of how this one is going end. Luckily, that matters little with director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s, contribution to the well-trodden yet eerily appealing narrative.

Taking Carpenter’s queue to rely on human paranoia and go easy on post-war politics, The Thing is the real thing. Sorry, I’ll stop doing that. What keeps this flick from being yet another infuriating remake of a beloved movie is Heijningen’s attention to details from Carpenter’s film and an exceptional cast of international actors. Oh, and the terrifying creatures of nightmares nobody in their right mind would even image don’t hurt either.  

The title credit burns into the screen, a ragged and threatening font, just as it did in 1951 and 1982. Amidst a blinding snowy scene, a Norwegian research group makes a historic extraterrestrial discovery deep in the ice of Antarctica. The first few minutes of The Thing will feel familiar to X-Files fans (as will the dramatic way characters look up from microscopes), but the difference here is that the alien space craft stuck in the ice for 100,00 years is shown plain as day.  

Grad students Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Adam (Eric Christian Olsen) are recruited by Dr. Sandor Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) to the top secret site accompanied by American pilots Braxton Carter (Joel Edgerton) and Jameson (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Immediately there is distrust between the team of a dozen scientists (some who do not speak English) and the two flyboys. That distrust is only amplified when the frozen alien they bring back to the base wakes up and starts eating and imitating people. 

The first big scare is predictable, as are others to follow, but there are plenty of them. The pacing and suspense the rest of the time is slow and building, just as it should be. 2011’s The Thing is smart, unimaginably disgusting and horrific and a great platform for a stand out hero.

In the ’82 version that hero was scruffy Kurt Russell’s R.J. MacReady, pilot and explosives enthusiast. In 2011 it’s Winstead’s brilliant paleontologist grad student Kate. Kate’s level-headed command sneaks up on the mostly male group of American and Norwegian men as does her proficiency with a flame thrower. Her need to contain the alien goes beyond self-preservation – from the very beginning, she’s in it to save the world.

Nothing matches the frost-bitten paranoid isolation and creep factor of Carpenter’s version, but this one comes close. (I haven’t seen Hawkes’ 1951 film since I was a kid, so I can’t competently make a comparison.) The 2011 film also favors practical effects to digital magic, using it as a finishing tool and not the sole creator of creatures/scenes intended to illicit reaction from the actors. The digital effects are killer, don’t get me wrong – they were done by the same team that did District 9 – but there is plenty of alien slime and stuntmen on fire for us old-schoolers to relish. And it’s shot on film, a very welcome and rare occurrence lately.

I’m still unclear as to where this Mary Elizabeth Winstead person came from, but she is fascinating and I hope we’ll get to see her more.  Maybe her draw stems from her rare talent of looking like a real person. Winstead is just enough Ellen Ripley to earn street cred and yet she’s also unique. Kate’s not a blue collar space traveler like Ripley, she’s a scientist and she can be even cooler when the crisis demands. Kate plays off the more Russell-esque Aussie Edgerton well, but if you’re looking for a romance to bud in the midst of chaos, you’ll be disappointed. The Thing dwells on the slow process of alien digestion and replication in all its revolting detail – there’s only time for a few presumptive glances.  And if you’re looking for Winstead to be caught unprepared in her underpants like Ripley in Alien, this is Antarctica people – she’s nearly always wearing at least a warm sweater.

The supporting cast (mostly non-American actors) adds an authenticity to the story. Jørgen Langhelle as red-bearded Lars stands out and the subtitles really class up the place. What's great about this prequel is that it capitalizes on the set-up from the Carpenter film. It makes it more contemporary by adding a few chicks and yet doesn't loose that retro '80s feeling. With the exception of one Men at Work song (a nod to the Campbell novella) it's doesn't beat us over the head with the period either.

While watching this film you might ask yourself, why don’t these people stay in one group? Safety in numbers, right? What is the evolutionary advantage of this kind of alien? What’s the point of turning into something just like the thing you eat if you’re just going to bust through its skin and become an abominable eating machine anyway? These are questions best left at the theater door. And why are there so many flame throwers on available on an Antarctic research camp? Again, I prefer to give into the genre and have settled on the answer that they use the flame thrower to melt snow.

Here’s my advice: Stream the 1982 The Thing on Netflix before you see the 2011 version. You’ll get a kick out of the set reproduction and the reshoot of the first few minutes of the 1982 film showed during the credits of the 2011 flick. You will also see some of the grossest practical effects of all time. 2011’s The Things is a rare case when a new addition to a beloved story is made by people who clearly respect and love the source material. It’s not Carpenter, but it’s a pretty great way to spend a few hours on a chilly October night.

For more of Megan Carr’s movie reviews and media musings, visit her website at therestiscreamcheese.com.