La cosa

Incluso en una película bastante buena, a menudo vemos un potencial sin explotar, «algo» mágico en el fondo, ya sea una idea, un pensamiento o una insinuación a partir de la cual se podría crear una obra maestra inolvidable: si su creador cogiera bien la esencia de la historia, se olvidara de todos los clichés y fórmulas probadas, y siguiera su propio camino. Este es exactamente el potencial sin explotar que sentiría hoy en la película de Heijningen si Carpenter antes no lo hubiera explotado a la perfección. Su versión fue un drama íntimo, a través de un espeluznante miedo a un mal no identificable conducido a un terror aterrador. El freak-show digital de Heijningen no es ni íntimo ni dramático, es más literal, más rápido, más épico y más cliché. Sin embargo, funcionó bien para mí, en parte gracias a la ingeniosa idea que Carpenter arraigó en mis pesadillas cuando era niño, y también gracias a algunas ideas nuevas que la movieron del papel de una plagiaria parásita al papel de una pérdida de película digna. Considero que una de esas ideas es el cambio de emancipación del personaje principal de un héroe de acción de los años 80 (Kurt Russell) a una mujer inteligente que es la dentista Mary Elizabeth Ripley. Y gracias por los créditos finales ;-) (20.11.2011)

I was afraid that it would be a weak broth, but ultimately I was pleasantly surprised by this new Thing. A solid genre movie. Although it suffers from some ailments typical for American remakes, it still has something to offer. The disgusting things are duly revolting, Beltrami’s music thunders or sends chills down the spine, and Joel Edgerton successfully fills Kurt Russell’s shoes. I originally gave it three stars, but the scene in the closing credits that harkens back to the first Thing forced me to close my eyes and give it an extra star. This picture deserves it. (03.12.2011)

Carpenter’s The Thing is on a different level, but I’m glad that van Heijningen has at least sort of got into the same building :-) His new The Thing is a really nice effect horror movie, nothing memorable, but also nothing that can make anyone mad, there’s other stuff for that. It’s true that the people at the base are hard to tell from each other. It’s true that the layout of the base is never made very clear. It’s true that the paranoid atmosphere could have been better. But still, it was nice to watch from beginning to end. The digital character of the effects can be seen at times, but they were also thrilling in some scenes. Horror art it might not be, but it’s good horror fun. 7/10. (24.11.2011)

I don't consider myself particularly smart, but unfortunately, I can predict painfully accurately the appearance, expectations, outcome, and my overall impression of a substantial part of films. The film industry is trying to fulfill the task of producing a commercially successful film and at the same time appeal to the target audience. It was clear that the plot of Carpenter's legendary The Thing prequel could not take place among a group of Norwegians in a remote Antarctic base, because the decisive revenue still comes from the American market and the American viewer is truly self-centered, so attempts to place a blockbuster among European, Asian, or South American characters, with few exceptions, do not end well. It was also necessary to consider the female audience and the shift in the actions of female characters, who have been emancipated significantly since the 80s and are leading many action movies. Likewise, it was necessary to consider the significant American ethnic minority, and thus we have the composition of the main characters. The plots of films have also significantly accelerated since the 80s, and the audience has gotten much younger, so that had to be taken into account as well. By the way, at the expense of the film's quality, and because Matthijs van Heijningen clearly admires Carpenter and tries to follow in his footsteps, he doesn't understand what made the original film great. It was characterized by a dominant atmosphere of collective mistrust, hysteria, creeping fear of uncertainty, and the issue of who could still be trusted. If there's one thing missing in Heijningen's film, it's precisely such an atmosphere. Carpenter worked with long shots, and the key scenes were not the ones where the Thing ripped through human bodies, but the ones where the polar explorers confronted each other. If horror fans were able to discuss at length how a flamethrower ended up on a polar base, in Heijningen's film, I find incomparably more logical gaps and obvious nonsense. It's not a disaster, and within the genre, it's perhaps a decent average mainly due to the attractiveness of the source material, but this successor is nowhere near the quality of Carpenter's original film. I assumed it would turn out that way, so I avoided the premiere at the movie theater, and that was the right decision. Overall impression: 40%. (11.02.2012)

It's not bad, just completely useless, because the space that the prologue of the first film leaves open is unreasonably narrow for a prequel. In addition, the filmmakers are far too respectful and self-confident, thereby creating something on the edge between a prequel and a remake, which fails due to the inability to evoke the chilling and depressing atmosphere of the original film, but also that they opted for a female protagonist, thus pushing The Thing closer to Alien, which is a type of horror from which Carpenter's opus differs mainly in its focus on collective psychology and a paranoid atmosphere. Heijningen Jr. stayed in the middle - he didn't ruin anything, and he didn't create anything... I don't understand why the sequel in the style of the excellent PC game The Thing wasn't filmed. That has much greater potential... (13.12.2011)