Review of The Thing (2011) by Midge115 — 26 Feb 2012

Let me just start off this review by laying something down: It is impossible to talk about this film without mentioning John Carpenter's version. This movie is a prequel and it must be compared to what was on the table in 1982.

The Thing is something I was excited to see a prequel to. I saw John Carpenter's version of The Thing for the first time last August and instantly fell in love with it. Since then, I have seen the original and this prequel four times each.

I have also written a short story based off of John Carpenter's version. Least to say, I'm a huge fan of the concept of "The Thing." I went into the theater expecting nothing besides amazingly horrific monsters and that is almost what I got.

It was good to see The Thing have a modern prequel, but I think that the director should have stuck with what John Carpenter had done in his time. I wanted this prequel to revolutionize modern horror like John Carpenter's did back in 1982.

I didn't want to see the predictable jump scares when everything gets real quiet, I didn't want to have a large cast of characters so that they could all die off. I wanted a small cast so as to understand who the characters are and to feel their fear.

I wanted slow horror where the sight and sound of the Thing is so terrifying that I almost close my eyes. However, to my disappointment, I received none of these. And I don't like having to say "The Thing 2011" whenever I talk about this film.

I wanted the director to come up with a new name or at least a name that included "The Thing" in it. When I wrote my short story based off of Carpenter's version, I came up with a satisfactory name in under five minutes: "The Thing Under the Ice.

" The director, whose name I cannot pronounce, blamed the title on "not being able to come up with one that fit." That's just ridiculous. But, I digress. Another thing I didn't like about the movie was that the Thing itself relied on stupidity.

In the original, it was intelligent and knew when the best time was to transform into a horrific clawed monster. In this it did so whenever it got the chance so there could be a quick, dis-satisfactory chase scene.

In fact, I didn't like the design of most of the monsters. In Carpenter's version, many of the monsters were wild looking an alien, such as the one that came out of Norris' chest in the defibrillator scene.

It looked like a mini version of him and it had many spider like legs and such. No Thing in The Thing 2011 looks remotely similar to the terrifying creatures that Carpenter had. Instead it focused on the meat, claws, and teeth.

The one legitimately scary Thing in this prequel is the Split Face monster. The reason this one was so scary? Its design is actually from the John Carpenter film! Its corpse is seen in the original! This speaks for itself and shows that the original had much scarier designs for its monsters, like the dog thing that still unsettles me to this day.

Anyhow, there were things I enjoyed about the movie. The transformations were detailed and unnerving, and I think the use of CGI in such scenes was a good decision. No animatronics could do the kind of realistic tearing and moving around of flesh that CGI can do.

I also liked how they used a combination of animatronics and CGI in certain scenes. The severed hand things are actually puppets, the Split Face thing is a combination of animatronics (the body and head) and CGI.

By the way, the Split Face Thing is the creature with two faces if you didn't understand what I meant when I called it that. The scene with the Thing in the helicopter is also mostly animatronics. The special effects crew just went over everything with a fine (yet slightly unrealistic) layer of CGI.

To all who complain about the CGI: We're living in a modern era and the way things are done change. Don't get me wrong, I think the puppets and animatronics in the Carpenter version are amazing and better than CGI, but even compared to today, those robots are very advanced and very expensive.

Anyhow, I also liked the main female role. I think that it was a nice spin compared to the all male cast in the original. I think the actors all did their jobs very well. I especially like Joel Edgerton's acting in the scene in which he is hiding in a kitchen with a knife.

He seems legitimately frightened half to death and acts it out with such finesse that I felt his fear. Overall the movie was entertaining and it's fun to watch with friends when you don't really care for too much intense involvement with the film.

It lacks the extreme paranoia of the original and this film is only frightening in certain scenes. Like I said, it's fun to watch, but don't expect much.