Question: how do you craft a stand-alone and worthy prequel to a seminal slice of horror movie-making without cocking it up? The answer: not like this. So well-made and accomplished was John Carpenter's eerie, Hitchcockian classic that a straight remake was and should never be on the cards. If you're going for a prequel then you're still on wafer-thin ice. One wrong move (eg- using the same title) and the cracks start to appear, a few more and it's goodnight Viena.
One or two neat tie-ins to its 1982 source aren't enough to warrant the new Thing's conception. The set-up and scenario are virtually like-for-like yet the taut, tense and claustrophobic tones that ran so rich throughout Carpenter's finest film just don't come to pass in director Mathjis Van Heigimgen's toothless Thing. It may as well have been a remake.
Yes, the SFX are an improvement (of sorts) but it's surprising just how well they still hold up in Carpenter's pre-CGI creature feature. Some of the greatest horror films ever made relied little on the quality and exposure of on-screen gore and ghouls (The Exorcist, Jaws, Alien, The Mist). Heigimgen obviously didn't care for these films. Consider Carpenter's Thing; the fear and impact conjured rests not just on the nail biting, paranoid set-ups but in the mystery surrounding the Thing itself. Where did it come from? What does it want? What the hell is it? And what the exactly happened in that Norwegian camp? These questions, though, need not be answered. But where there's money to be made, there's always room for stale movies that rest on the shoulder's of giants.
Granted, this prelude can be understood and even enjoyed by those with zero knowledge of the original. But for those who know better, this isn't the real thing. The tale takes place in a Norwegian research camp somewhere in Antarctica. It's 1982 and after unearthing an ice bound, shape shifting alien, a group of US scientists start poking it with sticks; it breaks free and reeks havoc. Picking off the camp members one by one on its way to supremacy. Sound familiar?
Gone to an extent, then, is the mystery surrounding the creature and the ravaged camp. This Thing is a daft rendition of Carpenter's sublime Alien in the artic tale whose only glimmer of class lies in its transitional ending credits.
Shelf this one with 2009's Predators and the other pointless retools of recent times. If this is a sign of things to come from prequels to timeless sci-fi treasures then Prometheus (Ridley Scott's highly anticipated prologue to Alien) is going to hurt. But with Scott at the helm and Michael Fassbender on board, there is still hope for a break in this banal trend.
One or two neat tie-ins to its 1982 source aren't enough to warrant the new Thing's conception. The set-up and scenario are virtually like-for-like yet the taut, tense and claustrophobic tones that ran so rich throughout Carpenter's finest film just don't come to pass in director Mathjis Van Heigimgen's toothless Thing. It may as well have been a remake.
Yes, the SFX are an improvement (of sorts) but it's surprising just how well they still hold up in Carpenter's pre-CGI creature feature. Some of the greatest horror films ever made relied little on the quality and exposure of on-screen gore and ghouls (The Exorcist, Jaws, Alien, The Mist). Heigimgen obviously didn't care for these films. Consider Carpenter's Thing; the fear and impact conjured rests not just on the nail biting, paranoid set-ups but in the mystery surrounding the Thing itself. Where did it come from? What does it want? What the hell is it? And what the exactly happened in that Norwegian camp? These questions, though, need not be answered. But where there's money to be made, there's always room for stale movies that rest on the shoulder's of giants.
Granted, this prelude can be understood and even enjoyed by those with zero knowledge of the original. But for those who know better, this isn't the real thing. The tale takes place in a Norwegian research camp somewhere in Antarctica. It's 1982 and after unearthing an ice bound, shape shifting alien, a group of US scientists start poking it with sticks; it breaks free and reeks havoc. Picking off the camp members one by one on its way to supremacy. Sound familiar?
Gone to an extent, then, is the mystery surrounding the creature and the ravaged camp. This Thing is a daft rendition of Carpenter's sublime Alien in the artic tale whose only glimmer of class lies in its transitional ending credits.
Shelf this one with 2009's Predators and the other pointless retools of recent times. If this is a sign of things to come from prequels to timeless sci-fi treasures then Prometheus (Ridley Scott's highly anticipated prologue to Alien) is going to hurt. But with Scott at the helm and Michael Fassbender on board, there is still hope for a break in this banal trend.