Film review: The Thing

A remake is usually as difficult to review as a film in which the story is based on some earlier account, either real or fictional: In both cases, you have to go back and make a comparison to the source.

In the case of Matthijs van Heijningen Jr's The Thing, many advantages await the viewer acquainted with John Carpenter's 1982 cult film of the same name, but the two films are by no means mirror images, and appreciation (or knowledge) of the original poses no real obstacle to enjoying this quasi-remake.

In 1982, at the Norwegian research station in Antarctica, a group of scientists unearths a UFO and an alien life form encased in sheets of millennia old ice. They send for Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a twentysomething paleontologist, to come inspect their discovery, and she rushes over from the United States with her friend Adam in tow. What they find soon reveals itself as a diabolical creature intent on destroying the whole team as it starts picking them off one by one.

This silly premise is the basic framework in which the story is cast, but the film quickly rises above its synopsis.

There are a few annoying instances of the self-serving scientists playing the power card, and there is too much attention paid to the fact that the main character is one of only two women in the whole cast, a very noticeable deviation from the testosterone-heavy production of 1982, but luckily, issues of gender and power are briskly done away with. It's a horror film, after all, and the real power lies in the hands, or the claws, of the unnamable "thing."

As in the first film, the alien here is a gooey mutant whose tentacled innards come to life when it exposes itself, and it moves around repulsively like a spider-octopus hybrid. But there is another, even more sinister, aspect to this monster: It can transform to take the shape of any person it consumes, complicating the line between original and copy, though upon closer inspection (at your own peril!), the copy contains a very crabby extraterrestrial.

If you're familiar with Carpenter's original, you'll notice many similarities between the two films, but it is interesting to note that, whenever significant moments reappear in some form, they are slightly altered to ensure a level of surprise. This tactic, a nod to the film's theme of replication, yields a powerful entry among the ranks of prequels, sequels and remakes that, all too often, find themselves at the bottom of the barrel.

It is to his credit that despite the nearly three decades that have passed since 1982, director Van Heijningen does not flaunt the ensuing years of technological progress. It is clear that the "thing" is no longer a stop-motion special effects construction, and its credibility as a realistic threat is raised significantly, though the loss of its uncanny, seizure-like movements also diminishes the ick-factor for the viewer. Nevertheless, the thrill of waiting for the next attack is consistently exhilarating.

Whatever the outcome, all of the mayhem merely serves as prologue, because, see, the end of this film is the beginning of the original Thing, which opened at the site of the Norwegians' abandoned Antarctic research station.

The film has taken a respectful - though never blindly deferential - approach to its source material, which is used as a blueprint to tell a similar story occurring in the same fictional world, and both newcomers and Thing veterans will lick their lips at the prospect of finally seeing patient zero take its first breath.

The eerie dread that the first film's Shining-inspired silences and tracking shots elicited from the viewer is absent here, nor does it have the American scientists' proclivity for copious marijuana use (presumably, Norwegians don't get stoned), but it has real energy, and the screenplay finds ingenuous solutions and creative obstacles to the same problems encountered by the characters' earlier counterparts. And as before, the scientists' weapon of choice, the flamethrower, still guarantees lively images of a Thing flambée that never lose their ability to enthuse us.

André Crous can be reached at
acrous@praguepost.com