The Thing

Carpenter’s The Thing is on a different level, but I’m glad that van Heijningen has at least sort of got into the same building :-) His new The Thing is a really nice effect horror movie, nothing memorable, but also nothing that can make anyone mad, there’s other stuff for that. It’s true that the people at the base are hard to tell from each other. It’s true that the layout of the base is never made very clear. It’s true that the paranoid atmosphere could have been better. But still, it was nice to watch from beginning to end. The digital character of the effects can be seen at times, but they were also thrilling in some scenes. Horror art it might not be, but it’s good horror fun. 7/10. (24/11/2011)

It's not bad, just completely useless, because the space that the prologue of the first film leaves open is unreasonably narrow for a prequel. In addition, the filmmakers are far too respectful and self-confident, thereby creating something on the edge between a prequel and a remake, which fails due to the inability to evoke the chilling and depressing atmosphere of the original film, but also that they opted for a female protagonist, thus pushing The Thing closer to Alien, which is a type of horror from which Carpenter's opus differs mainly in its focus on collective psychology and a paranoid atmosphere. Heijningen Jr. stayed in the middle - he didn't ruin anything, and he didn't create anything... I don't understand why the sequel in the style of the excellent PC game The Thing wasn't filmed. That has much greater potential... (13/12/2011)

Even in a generally good film, we often see unused potential, that magical “something” in the background, whether an idea, a thought or a hint that could have turned that good film into an unforgettable masterpiece – if its creator had grasped the essence of the story correctly, dispensed with all of the clichés and tried-and-tested formulas and gone his own way. That’s just the kind of unexploited potential I would have picked up on in Heijningen’s film today if John Carpenter hadn’t perfectly put it to use before him. Carpenter’s version was an intimate drama built into a terrifying horror flick through the creeping fear of an unidentifiable evil. Heijningen’s digital freakshow is neither intimate nor a drama; it is more literal, faster, more epic and more riddled with clichés. In spite of that, however, it worked decently for me, thanks to the brilliant idea that Carpenter embedded in my childhood nightmares, and thanks also to the few new ideas that elevated it from the position of parasitic plagiarism to the role of dignified film fiasco. I consider the emancipatory change of protagonist from the ’80s action hero (Kurt Russell) to an intelligent woman, dentist Mary Elizabeth Ripley, to be one of those good ideas. And I give thanks for the closing credits ;-). (20/11/2011)

I was afraid that it would be a weak broth, but ultimately I was pleasantly surprised by this new Thing. A solid genre movie. Although it suffers from some ailments typical for American remakes, it still has something to offer. The disgusting things are duly revolting, Beltrami’s music thunders or sends chills down the spine, and Joel Edgerton successfully fills Kurt Russell’s shoes. I originally gave it three stars, but the scene in the closing credits that harkens back to the first Thing forced me to close my eyes and give it an extra star. This picture deserves it. (03/12/2011)

The Thing is not a bad movie. A useless film? Yes, but not a bad film. Well, not exactly. The director has a flair for the right horror atmosphere, helped by a more than good score by Marco Beltrami and a bunch of special effects artists who did an amazing job (seriously, because they combined state-of-the-art digital effects with excellent models and masks in a way that would make Stan Winston rejoice). It's worse with the film’s lousy script. The people who wrote it, in my opinion, let themselves get too tied up with the fact that they were writing a prequel and that they had to follow the original film with so many things (the axe in the wall, the ice "sarcophagus", the two-headed monster, the dog, the polar bear with his throat cut...) that they forgot about originality. Alas. I liked the beginning of the film, which honored the short story template, I liked ideas like the one with the seals and just about every scene with The Thing in action, but I still felt like I was watching something I'd already seen once before that had "only" been dressed up in a fancier coat. I was also sad to see how the script flubbed the characters (most of them are easily confused individuals) and several times also the logic (the helicopter crash and who survived it). Still, I was not offended by the new version of The Thing and I would not dare to give it less than a slightly above average three stars. (31/01/2012)