The thing about The Thing prequel is not so much that it is a bad film it just has an awful lot to live up to when compared to John Carpenter’s version.
Carpenter’s The Thing is probably my favourite film of all time. Everything about it just works so well. The slow burn, the paranoia, the location, the acting (especially the dog at the start) and the amazing effects by Rob Bottin are just incredible.
The new version or prequel was never going to match it. Yet is it worth going to see?
I had been excited about a prequel as the fate of the Norwegian camp brought many questions. Yet I was cautious about whether they could match, or at least, come close to the master work of John Carpenter.
If you are a fan of the original or have never seen it then it is one to watch. Old fans will go just to see if it is as bad as they imagined and new viewers of The Thing could find something most enjoyable.
If John Carpenter’s version did not exist then I feel this new version would have been more well received as it is a perfectly acceptable horror film in its own right with good acting, good effects and a good story. It is just you know Kurt Russell and Keith David are just over the horizon that makes it impossible to love the prequel.
The acting by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton and a bunch of Norwegians is all fine and Lars was one of my favourites. In fact I probably would have enjoyed it more if they had ditched all the Americans and just stuck with the Norwegian team as they have some good characters, but not enough time is given to their development.
That brings me to one of the main faults with the prequel. It is just too rushed.
They discover something under the ice. The Americans fly to the camp. The have a party. The Thing escapes and then it picks them off one by one.
Because of this headlong rush to the end we don’t get a chance for proper character development and, more importantly, we do not get the slow burn paranoia that worked so well in Carpenter’s version. You can figure out most of the Things from the off and it is all a bit much that every single time it attacks another human it has to Thing out and make a mess of itself and the victim and all of it on screen.
That brings us to the effects. They work, but CGI is just not the thing you want to see after Rob Bottin’s physical effects brought terror to the screen.
There are a lot of practical effects yet they too are enhanced by CG and you always get that too clean sheen to the proceedings. Basically the slime just does not seem real enough. A damn shame as it would have been so much better if they had kept it old school.
The basic story is what we knew happened. It was the bits in between the discovery, the axe in the door and the two faces melted together that we wanted fleshed out.
Again the film gives us this. It just does it in a lazy way taking the basic beats of John Carpenter’s version – the dogs ripping open their cage, a bearded American getting lost in the icy night and then showing up again, the blood test (or the beginnings of the test), putting all the suspects on the sofa and then it all going to hell, the last made dash to stop the Thing – they all show up in this new version which is a shame.
They could have gone a different route with the story. Maybe have some communication with The Thing as it obviously has some intelligence. There probably was a different tale to tell but studio interference or fear of the unknown may have made them bring it closer to Carpenter’s version.
I did enjoy the film or parts of it. Seeing how that axe got there, why the two faces where together and all the other nods to John Carpenter’s original did bring some goosebumps to this cynical movie goers skin and seeing the bits during the end credits involving a helicopter, a dog and an angry Norwegian with a gun made me want to put on John Carpenter’s version when I got home.
There in lies the problem for the prequel. It makes you want to watch John Carpenter’s The Thing. Never a bad thing, but one which makes me think I may not watch the prequel again.
I’ll probably watch Kurt Russell investigating the Norwegian camp and have my memories of what happened there help me fill in the blanks.
Have you seen The Thing prequel? What did you think of it?
