Thoughts after watching this for either the third or fourth time: As a prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 classic remake of The Thing this was a great story. Acting was good, script was good, dialogue was (mostly) not lame, the soundtrack accompanied the suspense and terror in a great way. The one flaw (and maybe it's just a personal opinion, I don't know) that I saw with this "reboot/prequel" was the creature itself. In the 1982 classic by John Carpenter, the alien life form was much more subdued, subtle... insidious and alien, which is what contributed to the horror. It wasn't brazen or vicious until provoked but acted more as a predator stalking, looking for a victim. Here we have the alien life form that is terrifying yet (IMO) lacking a lot of the "fear factor" of the 1982 version because this one meets its prey head-on, and of course from all appearances, is virtually unstoppable unless said victim happens to carrying around a flame-thrower. Guns, sticks, chairs, closed doors, etc etc are all minor annoyances to this freakish nightmare and it brazenly walks around stalking anything and everything. Again, maybe it's just my opinion, but that took a lot of the fear factor away from it. It seemed much more unearthly and terrifying when it "hid" in plain sight and only revealed itself when provoked. Apart from that glaring difference, I have no complaints about this 2011 remake/prequel. For the most part, it ties in nicely with the classic (which, I should note, is my favorite horror/sci-fi movie, so maybe that's why I appear to be a bit harsh on this one) and the ending is perfect. (Hint: Watch all the way through the credits.) There are some incredibly amazing special effects used here to create the most grotesque, horrific images that can never be burned out of a survivor's memory. Although not (IMO) as good as the 1982 version, this is still a great movie and deserves a watch.
A prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 classic with the same name, this copycat turned out to be better than I thought it would be. It offered nothing too original except a smart Ripley-type character who was decent and likeable. The filmmakers managed to tie the ending of this story into the opening of Carpenter's original, which was an appropriate thing to do since they had branded it as a prequel as part of its marketing strategy. I really don't think I would want to see this movie be a part of some "The Thing" box set, though. It's totally unnecessary and is really nothing but a cash grab based on an earlier masterpiece. Yes, that's right. I called Carpenter's original a "masterpiece".
What surprises about this prequel is that it isn't a bad movie at all, that is until the final act. There's some decent suspense and some real tension generated. The classic blood test scene of the original was almost to the point of being copied, but they pulled back and developed a different way to tell alien from human. It's not as effective, but it does manage to turn up the suspense. And about that last act, it's awful. The characters get involved in a "hiding from the alien" scene that makes absolutely no sense given what we find out about them later. Even the alien behaves like an absolute idiot. I don't know why I'm trying not to spoil this, but perhaps it's because I wouldn't want a forehead slapping moment ruined for me, either.
No comments about a movie containing aliens would be complete without a word or two about the special effects, and in this movie, they weren't very good. Everything is CGI and it totally eliminated any potential scares. They weren't SyFy Channel cheap but were at times very nearly cartoonish. The alien was not scary and even the gore, which there was less of than I anticipated, was not convincing in the least. Seriously, what is it about special effects that allows me to accept how bad they are in '50s science fiction or horror but reject them when current films botch them. This version of "The Thing" didn't impress in that department.
While "The Thing" from 2011 is a fairly solid prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 classic, the film still doesn't manage to come close to the qualities of the original. The story is too much of the same without matching the tension of its predecessor. The pace in particular was a little too fast for me; there is no time at all for the viewer to puzzle over who is still human and who is not.
The CGI effects aren't the worst I've ever seen. However, it is worth noting that the practical effects from 1982 have aged better than the computer effects from 2011. At least in places, though, there are at least a few gross-out moments that work.
The cast is fairly decent. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is convincing in the lead role, and I also found Joel Edgerton and Ulrich Thomsen suitable in their parts. Ultimately, however, they are all caught up in trying to recreate the 1982 premise in exactly the same way. There would certainly have been more in it to at least somewhat explore the background of the parasitic alien being, about which we don't really know any more after this movie than before.
At the end of the day, "The Thing" is certainly a movie that has its moments. But you can definitely just stick with the John Carpenter film and skip this prequel.
Part of my 2022 Sci-Fi Tuesdays
The Thing 2011 has a fault way too many prequels suffer from, and that is that it answers questions that doesn't need answering. I had no need to really see that the Thing, from Carpenter's The Thing, was an alien. I gathered that from what happens in the movie. I didn't need to know what happened on the Norwegian base either, because that was certainly something my mind cooked up for itself while watching the original.
Anyway, The Thing 2011 is not really all that bad, but it's totally redundant. Not only did they use many of the same scenes as in the original, but they also managed to make the effects way worse. Twenty-nine years later and the effects looked horrendous compared to the practical effects in the original. Way to go guys...
This is actually only the second time I have seen the whole of this movie. I haven't touched this since I saw it in the cinema back in 2011, and now you know the reason.
This could have been a good movie, if they had called it something else, and rewritten some parts of the story to set it apart from Carpenters masterpiece. Then maybe some of us would have judged it less harshly. At least I know I would have...
Review by somnomaniaBlockedParent2021-08-24T10:39:07Z
The only reason I'm not giving this a higher rating is because of what happened with the special effects, that I just learned about recently. According to what I've read, the creature effects in this were originally all practical - amazing, phenomenal practical effects; look up Studio ADI on YouTube, they have a number of videos of behind the scenes stuff regarding the animatronic and model creation used in this film. But the studio execs apparently felt that the practical effects were "too 80s" and had them largely overridden by CGI. Apart from the videos on YouTube, the original cut is lost to us. I stand by what I've said in the past, which is that the CGI isn't that bad in this. It's no Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, and it doesn't hold a candle to the animatronics originally used, but it's not that bad.
Apart from that, I feel this movie perfectly captures the tone of the 1982 movie. The music fits, the lighting and set design matches, and the sense of isolation and paranoia is the same. It's really a damn shame about the effects, because it seems like the entire movie - including the effects - was a love letter to the 1982 movie. They worked very hard to match the parts of the Norwegian base that we see in that one, down to the broken glass and scorch marks. The story is good, too; it doesn't try to replicate the beats of the 1982 film, instead giving us a separate viewpoint on what happened.