The Thing Released 2 December 2011 Director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Eric Christian Olsen Writer(s) Eric Heisserer Producer(s) Marc Abraham, Eric Newman Origin United States Running Time 102 minutes Genre Horror Rating 16

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Pre-make.

The creators of this film have been at pains to point out that this is not a remake of John Carpenter’s 1982 classic. That film itself was a remake of the 1951 Howard Hawks film The Thing from Another World. All three films are ultimately inspired by Who Goes There?, a 1938 science fiction novella by John W. Campbell. Carpenter’s film featured a cast of some of America’s finest character actors such as Wilford Brimley, Donald Moffat, Keith David, Richard Dystart and….Kurt Russell. The film itself was actually a flop at the box office on its initial release but gained a considerable cult following when released on video.

It’s since been widely recognised as a science fiction/horror classic. Carpenter has talked about a sequel for years but it never came to pass for various reasons. So instead from the producers of the Dawn of the Dead remake, we get a prequel. For those familiar with Carpenter’s film it began with two Norwegians in a helicopter trying to shoot a dog. This film seeks to tell the story of the events before that came to pass.

It begins with American palaeontologist Dr. Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) being visited by an old colleague Adam Finch (Eric Christian Olsen). He asks her to meet with famous Norwegian scientist Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen). Halvorson tells Lloyd that a massive discovery has been made in the Antarctica and that he needs her to come out on an urgent expedition. They are taken to the Norwegian site by American helicopter pilots Carter (Joel Edgerton) and Jameson (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).

When they get to the site they find out that the discovery is an alien spaceship and a being from the ship has been found frozen in the nearby ice. Under Kate’s supervision they extract the ice around the creature and bring it back to the base. However while the crew celebrate the discovery they believe will make them rich, the alien breaks out of the ice. Teams are formed to search for it but it attacks one of the Norwegians and starts to consume it before Carter and Jameson burn it. It’s taken back to the lab and a post-mortem is performed but Kate takes a sample of its cells and figures out that they’re still alive and are actively copying human cells. She figures out that the alien is capable of killing and imitating other beings perfectly. She tells the crew and while they don’t believe her at first, they soon see proof that she’s right. So now the crew are in a fight for survival against the creature and don’t know who to trust among each other.

You really do wonder what the point of this whole project was. Though technically, yes it is a prequel, it’s effectively a remake in that it pretty much tells nearly the exact same story again. So let’s invent a term for it. How about ‘pre-make’? So how does this pre-make stack up against the original? Well it’s nowhere near as good. The script is pretty weak and the actors haven’t got much to work with in terms of characterisation. Winstead is fine as the main heroine but Australian actor Edgerton doesn’t make enough of an impression as the main action man. In fairness Carpenter had a much better cast and a better script to work with.

Another problem is the special effects. They are just as disgustingly gory as in Carpenter’s film, but as you know they’ve been done with CGI, there’s something soulless about them. You know the guys who did the effects in the 1982 film slaved over that goo and gunge for days to get it just revoltingly right. Now anyone can just knock something up with a computer and you feel somehow that the craft has been taken away from it.

The cast are bumped off in an efficient manner but there’s none of the gut-wrenching tension that made Carpenter’s film so memorable. It’s watchable enough, but you can’t help get the feeling that it’s a waste of time really. You’d be better off just watching Carpenter’s film again.

- Jim O’Connor