Our society’s fear of Communism has long since faded from front and center, but it would seem that the idea of invasion from within still weighs heavily on our collective consciousness. John W. Campbell’s short science fiction story “Who Goes There?” has now been thrice adapted for the screen. Most memorably, John Carpenter used the concept of a shape-shifting alien creature to emphasize our fear of infection as AIDS began to appear. The resulting film, entitled “The Thing,” is now a cult classic of twitchy paranoia and body horror to make Cronenberg proud.
It would be interesting to know if Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr. is attempting to capture any purposeful kind of fear in his new version of Carpenter’s original film. Yes, ladies and gentlemen: despite the fact that the events of this “Thing” take place before, and lead up to, the happenings portrayed in the 1982 adaptation, it is for all intents and purposes a remake. The plot structure is the same, and with the exception of a glossy new CG sheen Carpenter’s brand of gory, macabre thrills is preserved intact. There’s even an obligatory Kurt Russell lookalike in Joel Edgerton, who scowls his way through a straight-man role that mostly requires him to point a flamethrower menacingly at suspected extraterrestrials. (Russell, die-hards know, was the lead in Carpenter’s “Thing.”) It doesn’t do anything radically new or original with its concept. Perhaps the highest compliment we can pay it, then, is that it is a functional (if not altogether necessary) retread.
It’s really a shame, because I enjoyed this movie and could see at the outset that it had a lot going for it, though I entered the theater with admittedly low expectations. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (of “Scott Pilgrim” fame) has a nice turn as a Ripley-esque character who’s just as tough as Sigourney Weaver’s alien hunter, but more likeable. Heijningen also shows a surprising amount of restraint in his narrative direction, especially for a film that is being marketed as, and essentially is, an R-rated gorefest (more on that later). He takes at least a nominal amount of time (read: above average for most 21st century horror films) to build atmosphere and suspense, and the result is a splendid rerendering of the jittery tension that I suspect fans of the original loved even more than all the grotesque creature effects. The new “Thing” is deeply affecting in its quiet stretches.
It doesn’t last, though, because Heijningen’s commitment to developing dramatic tension is ultimately revealed to be shallow pretext for a tableau of wall-to-wall blood, guts, and gag-inducing metamorphosis during the film’s final twenty minutes. A man’s face splits open to reveal rows of teeth. Spidery alien limbs explode from torsos. An alien’s otherwise human-looking hand detaches from his arm and shoves itself down one poor scientist’s throat. It’s enough to make you wonder how much of the suspense that existed within the story earlier was actually created by Heijningen’s directorial decisions, and how much was simply endemic to the film’s premise and subject matter.
The answer, as is usually the case, is likely a little of both. Even the most unskilled cinematic helmsman could produce a nice sense of dread by simply constructing the plot structure of “The Thing” correctly. All of the ingredients for a truly frightening film are pre-packaged here: a small number of human characters (and therefore suspects). A remote location: the snowy Antarctic wastes. An unnerving idea: that the person standing next to you could be an alien facsimile that is waiting to catch you alone, messily devour you, and spit out a perfect copy of you. But if all semblance of intelligent pacing were eliminated, you’d get a flat, predictable theme park ride. Heijningen’s pacing is not unintelligent. Relatively few transformations occur before the two-thirds mark. As suspects are lined up and inspected at close range, tension mounts as Winstead’s character approaches, flamethrower in hand… and left unresolved as more and more suspects turn up apparently innocent. Fear is created by our logical sense of elimination: as more characters are cleared, the chances that the next person in line is human grow lesser. Heijningen does not fail to exploit this fear, and as such there is no question that “The Thing” is more suspenseful than it might have been otherwise.
I suppose my major critique, then, is that when a shape-shift does occur, Heijningen suddenly drops all of his cards on the table. We are shown every detail in full, gut-wrenching CG definition. In these moments, especially in the early alien reveals, this is a serious miscalculation. In an instant, we are made fully aware that Heijningen has changed gears and is now aiming to glean his scare solely from the gory visual. The visuals are, granted, not without the power to frighten. But an image in film is ephemeral. When you are watching a movie, you see 24 distinct images every second. Once you see an image, your mind processes it; copes with it in a millisecond. The second you see something, it begins to lose its power to scare you, and your carefully constructed dramatic tone is squandered. Every time Heijningen showed a transformation or violent death merely for the sake of showing it, he meaninglessly forced himself to rebuild his film’s sense of dread from square one. Imagine how much more frightening “The Thing” would have been had we seen almost nothing until the end. Perhaps we should be thankful – such a cut might have been so terrifying as to be unwatchable.
I am frequently a champion of films that are dismissed by Christian viewers and critics simply because of disagreeable content. I make no bones of the matter that I consider this strategy of “discernment” to be shallow, and lacking in true understanding of what is “pure and holy.” Many times, films either make a statement that is powerful and true enough to warrant an overlooking of explicit content, or make a powerful and true statement through the use of explicit content. “The Thing,” however, has nothing to say. One cannot call it worthless, because it is a story with a structure that is crafted with just enough care to be artistic. But its extreme content serves no other purpose than to disgust, and as such I cannot in good conscience condone it. Heijningen’s gore is the worst kind of unnecessary evil.
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