The Thing (2011)

The staff at a Norwegian research base in Antarctica find a spaceship beneath the ice. They bring in an American paleontologist (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) when they find a body frozen some distance from the ship, and need someone to supervise excavating and examining it safely. Of course, it isn't actually dead, and the base is soon in the throes of paranoia over which of them aren't who they claim to be.

Going in, I couldn't remember if this was a remake of John Carpenter's 1982 movie, or a prequel. It's the latter, which I thought made it a remake of the 1950s adaptation of the novella they're all based on, which would make Carpenter's film a sequel to a movie both 30 years older and 30 years younger. But no, Thing from Another World was an earlier, less-faithful attempt at adapting the same story as Carpenter's version.

Anyway, the good news is, they used at least some animatronics and physical effects for the hideous creatures, rather than relying strictly on CGI. While they get the bizarre, twisted designs right, I think they're a bit too neat, if that makes sense. The creatures in Carpenter's version seemed to have teeth and eyes and limbs in all sorts of places, whether it made sense or not. Like life gone berserk. The monsters here have terrifying mouths and teeth and tentacles, severed arms that sprout their own lamprey mouths at the stump end, but there's a certain restraint to them. Mouths in one, relatively practical, location per creature.

The CGI mostly isn't bad, although there's something in the texture on the limbs that appear skinless that reminds me of some of the monsters from Resident Evil 4. That same glistening, exposed muscle tissue, look. It's less effective when they use CGI to put human faces on a full-on monstrosity, looks ridiculous more than anything. There is a scene I thought was pretty effective, where a creature climbs on top of one scientist and presses the side of its face against his and gradually absorbs him. That looked like a horrifying way to go.

The movie finds ways to avoid just repeating everything Carpenter's version did, some more effective than others. The attempt to do blood tests encounters sabotage, forcing Winstead to try a different, less-certain test (it also helps demonstrate her attention to detail, which plays a role later.) They find different ways to keep some of the cast out of sight for a while, so that the audience is left guessing about them. Most of the staff are Norwegian, and Winstead and a couple of other Americans don't speak the language. So there are scenes where the research head is talking to the staff in Norwegian and the Americans don't know what they're saying. Usually at tense moments. Could be telling them to comply, could be saying, "attack and kill the Americans on the count of 3."

On the other hand, while there seems to be a bigger staff at this base, most of them get little fleshing out. It's hard to care if one turns out to be a monster, or if they die a human. Sometimes it was hard for me to tell which scruffy, sullen white guy was which.

The climactic battle is, eh, I don't know about having it take place in the alien ship. Especially when the alien is seemingly unable to shift its own form to more effectively navigate in these weird crawlspaces. When it can split an arm off to act as an autonomous organism, why not split itself into smaller selves that will fit?