The Thing (2011) ***

 

Prequels are, by nature, highly constrained. A sequel may have to start with what happened in the past, but it is free to take any path it wants into the future. A prequel to a movie, on the other hand, has to make sure that everything that occurs leads (hopefully logically) to what we know takes place in the original film. Despite these limitations, producers Marc Abraham and Eric Newman made the right decision when they chose to update John Carpenter's 1982 classic "The Thing" by making a prequel. First, it would have been a travesty to remake the original, which is perfect as it is. Second, this is not a movie that demanded a sequel. The ending was perfect, and while it is possible to imagine a sequel, I cannot imagine one being anything other than a blight on the legacy of the original. The real untold story here, as Abraham and Newman realized, is, “What happened with that Norwegian team that found the Thing before it wandered into Kurt Russell's camp.” With writer Eric Heisserer and director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr, they managed to fill in that backstory in a way that mostly works, and which certainly does not sully the original.

If you are a fan of John Carpenter's film (and you should be), you may recall that it starts with a husky running through the snow, chased by a helicopter bearing the Norwegian flag. 2011's “The Thing” rewinds the clock to tell us how a couple of Norwegians wound up trying to murder a dog, and how their camp got into the state in which Kurt Russell's character finds it.

With a team of Danish and Norwegian actors, van Heijningen portrays a scientific team that discovers a flying saucer buried in the ice, and nearby, also frozen, they find something that might have been the pilot! They recruit some American researchers, including paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), to help them excavate the creature, which turns out to have some surprises for them.

John Carpenter's “The Thing” is a masterpiece of dread, perfectly-paced, and punctuated by a thrumming score by Ennio Morricone. There is no way van Heijningen's film was going to top that, and it does not have to. All it has to do is entertainingly tell the story of the Norwegian camp, which it ably does. This film lacks the humor of the original, and I would say that scenes in this film sometimes seem to be tracking similar scenes from the original. All in all, though, this is a serviceable prequel. Now the big question, one that is very familiar to Star Wars fans, is this: Now that a prequel exists, how should new viewers approach the franchise: in chronological order or in order of release? In this case, there is no question. A new viewer should watch John Carpenter's “The Thing” first, then 2011's “The Thing.” John Carpenter's film introduces the horror incrementally, slowly revealing what is going on as the characters learn it, and you do not want to rob yourself of that experience.

3 stars out of 5

(John Carpenter's “The Thing” earned 5 stars)