The Thing Review (non-spoilery)

"The Thing" (2011)

I won two advanced screening tickets to see "The Thing", last night.  My friend Anthony accompanied me to the screening.  I must admit, I was a bit nervous about this movie.

When I first heard Hollywood was doing a version of John Carpenter's "The Thing", I wasn't a happy camper.  At the time, no one was sure if it was going to be a remake or a prequel.  My biggest fear was that they would butcher the film, completely.  Good thing?  It turned out to be a prequel. So, John Carpenter's "The Thing" is still intact and amazing.

MacReady in BAMF mode. "The Thing" (1982)

I'm not going to delve into the whole movie and break it down.  NO SPOILERS, remember? However, I will say... I was pretty impressed.  While I was watching the movie, I did grumble at certain things(not even going to lie about it) and it took me awhile to warm up to it.  Slowly, it won me over.  Was this prequel to "The Thing" an amazingly epic movie?  No.  Was it bad? No.  I'm going to go with pretty good.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ulrich Thomsen. "The Thing" (2011)

For all the good moments in the film, there are bad moments.  I had issues with some of the CGI effects.  Call me "old school", but I love the old techniques used back in the 80's.  One of the strong points of John Carpenter's "The Thing" was Rob Bottin's truly horrific, shocking and dazzling monster transformations.  To this day, I'm still blown away by it all.  In this prequel, we don't get those shockingly horrific effects.  I was disappointed.  But, what can we do?  Hollywood pretty much relies on full-on CGI effects, these days.  Not to say it's a bad thing.  I just wished, in regards to horror movies, they used less.  Still, the effects were okay (at best).

Little peek of splitface in "The Thing" (2011)

Also, and this is not spoilery, I know some of you will take issue with the fact that the original team was supposed to be Norwegian.  Not in this film.  For America's sake, the team is mostly Norwegian with some Americans thrown in there for good measure.  Having mostly Norwegians and the fact that they used their language, made me happy enough.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Dr. Kate Lloyd, your lovely heroine.

I'm a firm believer in seeing things for myself and not to go by what this, this or this person said.  I think John Carpenter's "The Thing" fans will be appreciative of this prequel.  Sure, it was awesome not knowing what actually happened and it let us to use our imaginations but it will bring new life and new fans to John Carpenter's "The Thing".  They stayed as true to the original story as they could.  Honestly, I can't complain.

Just a little advice: When the end credits first start to appear, DON'T PANIC AND DON'T MOVE.  You'll get it.