Written by Jamie Riordan, New Media, DFI

Film: The Thing (2011).
Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Stars: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton and Ulrich Thomsen.
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi.

The news of a prequel to John Carpenter’s, The Thing (1982) was received with the usual mixture of anxiety and excitement that only comes when any classic film has been pulled up from the vault for a reboot or in this case the prequel treatment. Like desperate children waiting for an insecure mother to return from plastic surgery, Science Fiction fans nervously pondered and anticipated what new form their dear beloved film will now take. They are a strange bunch and admittedly I am one too, so I felt the same sense of apprehension as I entered the cinema to see The Thing (2011).

The producers claim that this film is a prequel to the already flawless Carpenter version where we saw a small team of American Antarctic scientists holed up in their base camp, cut off from the world in a snow storm, and turning on each other as paranoia and isolation mix with the real threat of an alien entity amongst them. We have seen all manner of aliens before but this subversive beast has the ability to spread like a virus within its hosts, taking on their form, before revealing itself as a tentacle wielding, teeth gnashing, space monster. This thing does not take prisoners.

The unimaginative title for the prequel gave a clue as to how different this film would be from its predecessor. The question on everyone’s lips: how would they tackle the story of the Norwegian team? For those of you not familiar with the original film, The Thing (1982) starts with the two remaining Norwegians scientists tracking a husky across the ice, desperately trying to kill it and halt the alien within spreading any further. The Thing (2011) starts sometime before this as the Norwegians find buried in the ice a spaceship dating back 100,000 years. So far, so good.

At this point the producers decided that the film must have Americans in it as nobody wants to watch a bunch of Norwegians running around in the snow, no matter how impressive their beards are. So we awkwardly jump to our introduction of the film’s female lead, paleontologist Kate Lloyd, played by Mary Elizabeth Winsted, of Scott Pilgrim fame. Oddly as we meet her she is examining the body of what looks like an alien from the first film, but nobody seems fazed by this. Instead, our antagonist Dr. Sander Halvorson – played by Ulrich Thomsen, arrives to enlist this young but brilliant bone digger into his team. Ignoring the strange beast in front of him, he precedes to break every code of silence in the book, disclosing they have found a structure in the ice along with a specimen he needs her to examine.

After a quick, “should I? Should I not?” moment, she is whisked off with a handful of other Americans to help overcrowd the Antarctic cabin and ensure the now 17 cast members will have so little screen time that no one will bat an eye lid when they eventually have their heads ripped off by the now defrosting extra-terrestrial menace.

It is a crying shame the way this prequel has been treated. The shocks do come in decent doses and if you are a fan of jumping from your seat, there are plenty of scares to keep you up in the air. But if you are a fan of science fiction, or just need a gripping story in between the monster mayhem then sadly you are not going to find it here. The plot points pretty much mirror that of the original, and I am not sure if the writers had quite decided if they were writing an original screenplay or just revamping an already brilliant one.

There are worthy performances from Winsted and Thomsen as they challenge each other over their scientific methods with Winsted’s character, Kate, having to prove herself as a woman in a film set in the 1980s, a role reminiscent of Ridley Scotts, Ripley in Alien (1979). Eventually when it becomes apparent that The Thing may be amongst them, Kate’s role escalates to leader as she sets about identifying who may or may not be an alien. It is at this point the film becomes laughable, as her scientific test is that The Thing can only impersonate organic material, so anyone who doesn’t have dental fillings becomes a suspect. Bad luck if you look after your teeth.

The special effects in the original film were stop motion masterpieces, and like we have seen in the modern version of Clash of the Titans, the new gloopy CGI versions are nowhere near as realistic or scary. What is special about this creature is its ability to divide and change its cells at will into parts of anatomy from previous species it has absorbed over the course of its 100,000 year life span. It would do this either to escape from its enemies or enslave new victims. Arachnid legs sprouting out of an infected severed head was a highlight of the original film and we do see some new incarnations including victims’ arms dropping off and becoming centipede-type creatures.

The film has some nice nods for the fan boys, mainly the remains of people and items found in the original film, like an axe left in a wall and the fused bodies of Wolner and Finch. But when the best part and tie-in of the film is the end credits, where we see the surviving Norwegians chasing the infected dog across the ice and thus linking to the original, you have to ask yourself why you are enjoying these fleeting moments the most. Probably because it is the start of the original film and nothing you have just witnessed has come close.

Maybe it is because I am such a massive fan of the original that I complain so. In fairness if you come to this fresh you may well enjoy it. The way the victims are taken is quite disturbing and the mutation The Thing takes on is the stuff of nightmares. Interestingly the film leaves a plot point to take the story further, mentioning a Russian outpost that Kate should head to for rescue. If the producers decided to have another throw of the dice then I would be intrigued to see more, as there are unanswered questions that I hoped would be addressed in this film, like – what is The Thing, where did it come from, and where was it going when it crashed into our primitive Earth?

My love of science fiction is the questioning that you give yourself when leaving the cinema. For me, no other genre opens up so many theoretical and philosophical debates. It is a shame the only thoughts that rattled through my mind as I rose uninspired from my seat, was the fear that the upcoming prequel to Alien, by Ridley Scott would be similar to this. Tarnishing the mythology in the same way Lucas did with Star Wars. Sometimes they get it right, eventually, as in Rise of Planet of the Apes (2011), but here, they got it so wrong that I can barely remember anything good about this poor attempt of a prequel to John Carpenter’s brilliant science fiction classic.