-By Maitland McDonagh
For movie details, please click here.
Ambitious young paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)
is surprised when the eminent Dr. Sandor Halvorson (Danish actor
Ulrich Thomsen) invites her to join his Antarctic research team,
but he comes recommended by her poutingly handsome pal Adam Goldman
(Eric Christian Olsen) and she smells a career-making opportunity
in his cryptic references to something remarkable they've
discovered buried deep in the pack ice.
Forty-eight hours later, she's at Thule Station (ominously named
for the region ancient geographers considered the ends of the
civilized Earth), and some 24 hours after
that she's
fighting for her life: Halvorson's team has uncovered both a
bona-fide UFO and an alien that isn't as dead as it looks, despite
having been frozen solid for centuries. And its ability to mimic
other living things—including people—means there's no telling who
can be trusted, from senior geologist Edvard (Trond Espen Seim) and
hunky American helicopter pilot Carter (Australian actor Joel
Edgerton) to Lars (Jorgen Langhelle), the gruff façade with the
cute little dog.
Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen counts Carpenter's
The
Thing among his favorite movies and, to his credit, managed to
sell normally subtitle-averse studio executives on casting Nordic
actors as the Norwegians and having them speak English only when
with Americans. Eric Heisserer's screenplay is clearly the work of
a fan who got a major kick out of making his story dovetail neatly
with the one that thrilled him as an impressionable youngster and,
like the 1982 version, this
Thing is heavily invested in
grotesquely imaginative special effects, though the pervasive
influence of Japanese "tentacle horror" lends icky sexual
implications to scenes in which the alien impales screaming
monster-fodder with various writhing extrusions and melts bodies
together in a grotesque sort of extreme intercourse. In all,
there's plenty to entertain current horror fans, and maybe even
send them back to
Things past.
Film Review: The Thing
Slick "prelude" to John Carpenter's 1982 remake of the classic ’50s monster movie sics an alien shape-shifter on a team of Norwegian scientists based in a remote Antarctic research station. And while they may be savvier than the trapped victims-to-be of earlier incarnations, the new guys get picked off just as predictably.
Oct 12, 2011
-By Maitland McDonagh
Ambitious young paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is surprised when the eminent Dr. Sandor Halvorson (Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen) invites her to join his Antarctic research team, but he comes recommended by her poutingly handsome pal Adam Goldman (Eric Christian Olsen) and she smells a career-making opportunity in his cryptic references to something remarkable they've discovered buried deep in the pack ice.
Forty-eight hours later, she's at Thule Station (ominously named for the region ancient geographers considered the ends of the civilized Earth), and some 24 hours after
that she's fighting for her life: Halvorson's team has uncovered both a bona-fide UFO and an alien that isn't as dead as it looks, despite having been frozen solid for centuries. And its ability to mimic other living things—including people—means there's no telling who can be trusted, from senior geologist Edvard (Trond Espen Seim) and hunky American helicopter pilot Carter (Australian actor Joel Edgerton) to Lars (Jorgen Langhelle), the gruff façade with the cute little dog.
Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen counts Carpenter's
The Thing among his favorite movies and, to his credit, managed to sell normally subtitle-averse studio executives on casting Nordic actors as the Norwegians and having them speak English only when with Americans. Eric Heisserer's screenplay is clearly the work of a fan who got a major kick out of making his story dovetail neatly with the one that thrilled him as an impressionable youngster and, like the 1982 version, this
Thing is heavily invested in grotesquely imaginative special effects, though the pervasive influence of Japanese "tentacle horror" lends icky sexual implications to scenes in which the alien impales screaming monster-fodder with various writhing extrusions and melts bodies together in a grotesque sort of extreme intercourse. In all, there's plenty to entertain current horror fans, and maybe even send them back to
Things past.
