Carpenter’s film opens up with a chopper with two Norwegians chasing a dog across the Arctic wasteland, firing at it with a rifle. A DOG! Probably the most traumatizing opening for a film that I had witnessed to that point and it set the mood for the next 90 minutes. If I was paranoid before, imagine now. Carpenter’s bleak opening that set the stage for the sequel I’ve been waiting my whole life. Who were the Norwegians and what happened at that outpost? These are the questions that we were promised answers to. And we were gonna get them.
The film opens with the Norwegian
scientists crashing their van into a crevasse and discovering the alien
ship. It’s a swift opening that cuts to the chase but allows us enough
time to get a sense of the characters. Cut to America where we meet
paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and her friend Adam
(Eric Christian Olsen) who is in the process of getting her attached to
the team flying up to investigate. She agrees of course and we’re on our
way.
There we meet the rest of the group, Derek (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje of LOST), Olav (Jan Gunnar Røise), and Henrik (Jo Adrian Haavind) among others, yes; almost everyone has three names on this film. They investigate the craft and discover…wait for it…some THING frozen in the ice. Well let’s just bring that bad boy upstairs. While they are celebrating their riches to be, Derek wanders down to scope out the thing they found. Bad idea, it appears that all the commotion has awakened the thing and it breaks out of the block of ice and begins doing what it does, starting the paranoia, accusations and accidental kills that we expect.
This is where the damned if you do; damned if you don’t rule comes into effect. The film adheres to the formula closely and if that’s not what you wanted from a sequel to John Carpenter’s film you might not be happy with it. Then in the climax, which veers off the path to give us a little more info about the thing, you might feel they given you too much and ruined Carpenter’s vision. There’s just one thing, this isn’t John Carpenter! Hell, John Carpenter isn’t even John Carpenter anymore. Let it go. I was so happy to have a film in Halloween that wasn’t SAW, you should have been too.
The THING 2011 may not be for you, but at least it isn’t a 2 hour commercial for TV teen stars, clothing or crappy music. It can take you back to a past when all things were better if you leave that past behind.
There we meet the rest of the group, Derek (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje of LOST), Olav (Jan Gunnar Røise), and Henrik (Jo Adrian Haavind) among others, yes; almost everyone has three names on this film. They investigate the craft and discover…wait for it…some THING frozen in the ice. Well let’s just bring that bad boy upstairs. While they are celebrating their riches to be, Derek wanders down to scope out the thing they found. Bad idea, it appears that all the commotion has awakened the thing and it breaks out of the block of ice and begins doing what it does, starting the paranoia, accusations and accidental kills that we expect.
This is where the damned if you do; damned if you don’t rule comes into effect. The film adheres to the formula closely and if that’s not what you wanted from a sequel to John Carpenter’s film you might not be happy with it. Then in the climax, which veers off the path to give us a little more info about the thing, you might feel they given you too much and ruined Carpenter’s vision. There’s just one thing, this isn’t John Carpenter! Hell, John Carpenter isn’t even John Carpenter anymore. Let it go. I was so happy to have a film in Halloween that wasn’t SAW, you should have been too.
The THING 2011 may not be for you, but at least it isn’t a 2 hour commercial for TV teen stars, clothing or crappy music. It can take you back to a past when all things were better if you leave that past behind.
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