I’m still at a loss to explain alien behavior. You develop the technology, you choose to visit a planet, you travel millions of miles, you settle at the very worst place to be, you get yourself frozen for centuries (?) and all for what? So you can wake up and kill humans one at a time in very gory ways? I’m afraid I just don’t see the big picture.
Ok, new scenario: you’re a paleontologist, and a very pretty one at that, thank you very much. A gruff middle-aged Norwegian doctor appears at your work station with a cryptic message about “finding something” and an immediate need for you to travel with him to Antarctica. Do you go? I suppose you have to if this is your movie, but I’d wonder why the secret couldn’t send me to a beach in the Virgin Islands. Aliens: Serious lack of taste … am I right, folks?
Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) does get dragged to Antarctica to shack up with a dozen Norwegian scientists. Another question – these guys live in Norway and work in Antarctica, where do you suppose they go to get away from it all, Greenland? Kate has to help a team fish a specimen out of ice. An alien specimen. Oh, and the alien isn’t dead. And it likes blood. And it can imitate any life form it comes in contact with. That’s a heckuva tool. And if left uncontained, it could get to the mainland and kill at least TWO dozen people, and some of them not even Norwegian.
Killer aliens who can imitate humans is a great stratagem, film-wise. Luckily, Kate’s smart and she devises a fool-proof way to determine decisively if one is human, but it involves checking teeth. Hence the next scene is ten people in a room and the only woman among them peering into mouths with a flashlight. This is the core of quality horror – it needn’t be graphic or sudden, just creepy. It would probably be of higher quality still if we hadn’t almost the exact same scene in the John Carpenter original.
When you think about it, The Thing has all the elements of classic horror: geographic isolation, blood lust, disguise, low survival rate, diminishing suspect list, desperation for containment all wrapped in a certain ewwww factor that can only come from bio-imagination. The visual effects here are fantastic, no question. In fact, I can only fault this Thing on two counts: 1) I couldn’t tell who was who. I guess all Norwegians look alike to me (please don’t mention this to my mother) 2) It’s a remake. We’ve seen this and it was quite good the first time, too.
Rated R, 103 Minutes
D: Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr.
W: Eric Heisserer
Genre: Unnecessary remake
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Horror fans who have inexplicably not seen the original.
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Eye-shielders
