I thoroughly enjoyed The Thing. And whether you love (as I do) or have never seen John Carpenter’s 1982 one, you will too. In fact, you’re kind of in luck if you never saw the 80s one, cuz this is a prequel. And a damn good one, with a 73% audience rating on rottentomatoes.com. (33% from critics, but who cares what they think.)
Dr. Sander Halversen (Ulrich Thomsen) and his research assistant Adam Goodman (Eric Christian Olsen) ask paleontologist Dr. Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to accompany them to the frozen arctic, where a crew of Norwegian scientists has discovered something big. They are flown to the location by pilots Sam Carter (Joel Edgerton) and Derek Jameson (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). The something turns out to be an alien spacecraft, buried in the snow … and an alien, frozen in the ice. They dig the alien up, it escapes, lots of gory death ensues.
(Now, like me, you’re probably thinking that the second the alien escaped, you’d have hopped on the helicopter and flown the hell home. But since the movie would be over in about 17 minutes if the characters were that practical, lol, we must forgive everyone the decision to go looking for it.)
I love that the main character is a smart, level-headed, resourceful female. There is simply not enough of that in horror, a genre in which the sole purpose of the pretty girl is usually to get naked in a gratuitous shower scene and then die. Kate not only keeps her clothes on but she’s also the one who figures out that the alien is replicating humans. “Now she’s in charge,” the geologist mutters to the medical officer at one point. Damn right. (Thank you, Sigourney Weaver in the Alien movies, for making this possible.) Another plus is that the black guy doesn’t die first. (Oh shut up. I didn’t ruin that for you. We all knew the black guy was going to die.) Also, same as with the original, I totally dig that whole “How do we know which one of us is an alien?” concept. It is CREEPY, and it makes you think long and hard. Could you incinerate your BFF with a flamethrower if your life depended on it? I could. What? That doesn’t make me mean! She’s already dead! It makes me practical.
There aren’t any really big names to distract from the awesome horrorness. My Dad recognized Olsen from NCIS; the only person I recognized was Akinnuoye-Agbaje from Lost and from Oz. I. Love. Him. Anything I didn’t love? Yes. They pull that done-to-death and always-annoying move of the heretofore perfectly functioning weapon suddenly not working at the very moment it’s needed the most. OH COME ON. Also, I find it hard to believe that after witnessing something attempt to swallow a dude whole, the only protection you’d wear while examining its body is plastic gloves.
Somebody get me a full hazmat suit please and thanks. Third, at some point Kate magically develops the ability to speak Norwegian. Fourth — and most sinfully egregious — there’s no Wilford Brimley cameo. EPIC AND EVERLASTING FAIL.
But overall, The Thing very much does not disappoint. The special effects are pretty disgusting, by which I mean amazing and very realistic. The alien engorges, swallows, severs, skewers, mutilates, and melds human bodies, sometimes as the dying human screams in terror. You will be delightfully grossed out … and not hungry for several hours afterward.
