Release Date – 10/14/2011
Kate Lloyd is a young paleontologist who is hired by a scientist, Sander Halverson, who believes he has discovered an alien life form in Antarctica. Along with a Norwegian team of scientists, he puts together his own team to extract a frozen alien and examine it. Turns out the alien is not dead and breaks free from the ice to wreak havoc on the camp. They soon find out that the alien is able to copy the cells of other living things and disguise itself as them. So now there’s no telling who is human and who has been taken over by the alien. I had low expectations knowing full well that 2011 is an age of CGI and this was supposed to be a prequel to a classic movie using lots of makeup and animatronics. But I was pleasantly surprised. It had some scares and a decent story which is just a long back story to the John Carpenter classic.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the lead role of Kate Lloyd. She’s the one that discovers the alien life form can copy humans. She is the lead of the entire movie and we never once think she has been taken over by the alien. Joel Edgerton plays the helicopter pilot that just gets wrapped up in the terrible scenario. A combination of the two try to equal Kurt Russell but it can’t be done. Ulrich Thomsen is the lead scientist who only cares about gaining fame from the discovery. There are some other familiar faces but they are all secondary to the three mentioned above. If you’re looking for a Kurt Russell-MacReady type character then you will be disappointed. Edgerton never fully embraces a role that you will love. He doesn’t have enough screen time to build up. Winstead kind of takes the reigns there and its just harder to get behind a woman in that role especially when he starts trying to become a badass. The alien is seen much more in this film than in the 1982 movie of the same name. That kind of takes away from the thriller aspect and makes it more of a monster movie. Speaking of the alien/monster, the CGI was not terrible. It still had some really creepy visuals which was exactly what I was hoping for. And a few moments that actually made me jump.
If you didn’t see the original The Thing then you may have thought this was a reimagining of that film. But its actually a prequel, complete with the tie in to the original during the end credits. This is the movie that shows how the alien was discovered. It even gets more into a sci-fi aspect, showing the alien’s ship, making this partially a different film altogether. But its not entirely different. Its almost like a remake in that a group of people are still holed up during a snowstorm guessing who is bad and who is good. There’s still a lot of fire involved, much like the first movie. First time feature film director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. (don’t even ask me how to pronounce that) did a good job. There aren’t any great acting performances but the ensemble cast does well enough to keep you interested. Of course half of them are only there to die. If you’ve seen the 1982 film then you know, there really aren’t many survivors from the original camp that discovers the alien. But like I’ve already said, The Thing 2011 was surprisingly entertaining and creepy enough to give it a positive review. But the first one is still better. I missed Kurt.
IMDB – 7/10
Rotten Tomatoes – 31%
Movie Wiseguys – 7/10