When I think of modern horror, there is only one film that I always recommend to those that want a good scare. On top of that, a film that they could add to their library as being a good film that will be remembered and loved. For me its the 1982 film 'John Carpenter's The Thing'. Every aspect of this film is perfect, from the musical score, the gore and puppetry effects, plot, characters, everything.
The plot is simply this:"Scientists in the Antarctic are confronted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of the people that it kills." For the new film they really went out of the box and decided to do a prequel. The plot for this new one is: "Scientists in the Antarctic are confronted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of the people that it kills.". wait....oh.
Yes the plot is very similar in this unnecessary prequel that is there to supposedly answer a lot of questions that we never wanted answers to. The film's main star is Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Katie Lloyd, a scientist that is convinced to go to Antarctica on an exposition. When there, they find an alien ship and an alien frozen in ice. Like the geniuses they are, they bring it back to the Norwegian base where it soon breaks out of its icy case and starts to wreak havoc upon the camp.
I'll first say that this film fails at trying to be original by just re-hashing the same plot at the audience like they've never seen it. Its sad to say that if you have seen the original, almost the same plot carries out. One difference that is prevalent is that there are more people at this camp, so that the kill count can be higher. While that sounds like a good idea, it gets repetitive and annoying when characters that no one cares about are suddenly transformed into an alien, for no damn reason other than the script says so. In the original it is said that they alien must be within close contact to the person and for about an hour. well, to hell with that shit, cause that takes too long!
What really gets on my nerves is that the film tries so hard to get the set completely right from the original that it forgets what made the alien so unique and original in the first place! The fact that no one knows who is real and who isn't real was always such a brain fryer, and created such a since of dread and isolation. It was also a shock when someone was reviled to be a 'Thing' cause then anyone was liable to be killed off. Also, in the original they only showed the alien about four times making the audience try and figure out what it is. For this film, they decided to show too much of the thing to where its just a simple monster. When you show too much of something special, it looses its meaning and mysteriousness.
The CGI (computer generated imagery) is just awful. There's one scene where a person is reviled to be a Thing and suddenly his face and chest burst open and tentacles shoot out of him towards a person. It was so bad, and fake that I wanted to rewind the movie just to see how bad it was. The gore effects (at times) were pretty good actually and it was actually nice to see real gore and not pointless CG.
Another very annoing thing about this film is that the screeching and noise level was turned up so high that at one point, I put my fingers over my ears. Now i'm sure you are thinking "gee, what a wussy". No, I'm in marching band, so loud noises are easy for me (being next to the drums all the time) but this wasnt helping the monster, it was hurting it. One of the most iconic scenes from the original was where Bennings was half human and half alien. When he gets caught, he lets out this scream that still terrifies me to this day. This was the only time the alien screamed in the original.
Overall: 4.5/10
Low Rental.
http://youtu.be/8faq5amdK30
ReplyDeleteThe new film just makes me nostalgic for the old. Remakes are for movies that were flawed or need to be told in a way that the modern audience will be able to understand better. The John Carpenter film was not flawed and is still relevant and, considering that the new film was a prequel, the new film is not any more relevant. Some films need a remake or a sequel but prequels are largely unnecessary.
I have not even seen the film but, of what I've seen, it is another bloated studio film remake/sequel/prequel without any real thought put into it other than to use the original titles. This prequel was unwanted, unnecessary and sounds like at best, it is an okay creature feature, and at worst when it tries to reference the original it does so sloppily.