“The Thing (2011)” is as cold and lifeless as the frozen, Antarctic tundra in which it takes place. This is a prequel/remake-of-a-remake that bears none of the horror and tension of the original and shines as an example of pointless retread.
As mentioned, we find ourselves in Antarctica were a Norwegian research team has made a startling discovery. Beneath the millennia old sheets of ice the team discovers a space ship whose inhabitance is an unnamable monster unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. That is supposing you haven’t seen the John Carpenter version. If you’ve seen that, you won’t be surprised at all. In fact, you will more likely be disappointed by the lack of any effort to improve on the wondrous creatures that slithered and spit flailing tentacles at Kurt Russell in that modern horror classic.
“The Thing (1982)” began where this one ends, by discovering this doomed research camp and quickly finding that an alien is in there midst. An alien that can take on the form of any creature, man or beast, and walk amongst them. An invisible enemy that only shows itself when it is time to split its face in half and reveal the ghastly abomination beneath. “The Thing” was a Lovecraftian terror from the mind of a young FX artist, Rob Bottin (“Legend,” “Robocop”) that defied all convention and stands today as the ultimate example of practical special effects. The current film scraps most of that and relies too heavily on computer generated images, losing what made the source material special.
Carpenter also made an effective psychological thriller, building on the paranoia that came from not knowing who to trust while isolated in the middle of nothingness. Who was the Thing was a question that was just as exciting as What was the Thing. This update entrusts too much importance on suspicious glances and mistakes them for a tension building tool. It never works and waiting for the reveals becomes a tedious chore.
By making this the story about the doomed research station, the film essentially becomes about the correct placement of corpses. That’s were the find the suicide victim and that’s were they find the mangled remains of the creature….. And after all this effort, the final connection that is supposed to pass the baton from one movie to the next is forced and nonsensical.
To be fair, Carpenter’s vision was a remake as well, with him working from the 1951 Howard Hawks’ classic “The Thing from Another World”. This was one of his favorite films growing up and you can see the love and reverence he held for the original. None of that reverence is to be found in this limp film that belongs along side the recent retellings of “Friday the 13th” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” in the “Why Did They Even Bother” section of the video store.