Prequel isn't such a bad Thing

Antarctica, 1982. Scientists at an isolated Norwegian research outpost hone in on a strange signal emanating from somewhere under the ice cap. What they discover is a crashed space ship, a frozen and buried extraterrestrial, and the knowledge that at the South Pole, no one can hear you scream.

The Thing is this year’s throwback to the best horror movies of the 1970s and ’80s, back when John Carpenter was king. Halloween. The Fog. He knew just how to scare the audience and without a lot of Hollywood trickery.

His version of The Thing is still regarded as a classic of great filmmaking. In that one, Kurt Russell and his band of American researchers discover a dog being hunted by the Norwegians using high-powered rifles and a helicopter. The dog, as it turns out, is really a parasitic alien that assimilates its prey and then imitates them as a way of camouflage.

Once they fully understand the implications, the crew members experience a deeper sense of suspicion, isolation and paranoia in the middle of the icy nowhere. The tension and the foreboding atmosphere are suffocating, especially with a massive snowstorm barricading them all in. The only thing scarier than the great unknown in this frozen frontier is the great unknowable.

That version worked so very well not just for the psychological drama but also for its blood-curdling special effects, all of which were done with 1982 technology. That means that there weren’t any computer-generated beasties; all of the creatures were animatronic puppets.

Although this new prequel does have some computer generations, it holds up the Carpenter gauntlet by primarily using physical entities out of latex and hydraulics, or simple suits acted by people in disgusting disguises. This tactic earns high marks in my book. That, and the use of stunt performers make this a suitable companion piece to the original. Yes, that means that the flamethrowers get a lot of use again as defence against the strange predator.

Here, we see what happens at the Norwegian camp in the days preceding the attack at the American camp. American palaeontologist Dr. Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) gets summoned to the south by Dr. Sander Halversen (Ulrich Thomsen), ostensibly this movie’s version of John Hammond from Jurassic Park. He’s more concerned with discovery than humanity, a fact that becomes immediately apparent when the alien rears its ugly head and attacks.

The plot is still pretty much the same and follows a fairly typical and predictable path. As people start disappearing and then reappearing, the story goes straight down to being a whodunit or rather a ‘what’-dunnit. If there’s no escape then the only reasonable action is to keep the creature from escaping, too. They theorize that if it reached civilization, that would be the end of humanity.

The pacing is as languid as the subject matter will allow, and it works to a certain degree. Many will likely balk at how slow the beginning is but all you need is a little patience for a big payoff.

Paying homage to a master means that you need to include certain elements without copying them directly. The Thing itself is a devious impostor with its preposterous limbs, morbid morphology and profoundly upsetting transformations. Even those with great intestinal fortitude will cringe and squirm during the worst of the scenes. Yes, I covered my eyes. I got out of my seat to walk around, but then I sat right back down and enjoyed the show. The Thing might just stand the test of time.