The Thing

I wasn’t expecting much from this prequel, but it turned out to be very entertaining. It is not at the same level as the 1982 film – there is a good deal of paranoia, but this film seems to focus more on monster horror, which is fine.

I was reading what the director had in mind for the opening and later portions of the film where it explains The Thing itself. The story goes that the alien, called “Pilot”, was scientific mission studying different alien lifeforms. It takes specimens from different planets and one of the specimens was The Thing. All hell breaks loose on the ship and all the crew members are killed, in a last ditch attempt to kill The Thing, the Pilot crashes the ship on Earth. None of this made it to the film, but it all makes sense and I hope that sometime in the future a movie is made about this.

There were a lot of things in this film that call back perfectly to the first film and I really appreciate the filmmaker’s attention to detail. The filmmakers did go a bit far with the gore side of the film. And The Thing itself was shown a little too much, even though it is quite horrific, the horror wears a bit because of how often it is on screen.

I applaud the attempt at making a prequel to an iconic film like The Thing. For the most part this film is entertaining, it is not a must see like the 1982 film, but it is worth seeing if you’re curious about the Norwegian camp.