Disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (6 August 2003)

Carpenter actually managed to make his "The Thing" far inferior to its predecessor , the 1951 "The Thing From Another World". If you have read my comment on the latter you may know what I'm talking about, but the fact remains that you cannot make this sort of movie based purely on some cheesy monster, it has to be character driven first; that's why "Predator", the whole "Alien" franchise and some other monster movies work. And what does "The Thing" have to offer; well not much; Kurt Russel is his hillbilly self, taking the leader role from the very start and the rest of the cast doesn't amount to much either. The best part of the whole movie is the opener which really got me thinking and hoping what Carpenter had in store, but it just proved to be a disappointment. The movie also excluded some of the best scenes from the original, like showing the discovery of the space ship. The 1951 movie made that scene very thrilling, showing less than more, making the viewer yearn for a glimpse but never getting one. And don't get me started on the monsters; the comments I read from the IMDb users make you want to think the effects are better and scarier than anything you've ever seen, but the honest to God truth is I'd choose even the original creature from "Alien" any day. There are just so many things popping and bursting out of those creatures it's hard to swallow, and the head-turn-to-spider scene is a real gem when it comes to idiotic comedy. Plus it shows just how much the special effects creators were influenced by "Alien" which came out only a couple of years ago; the thing even lived off of the same thing, it needed a host and then it just ate whatever it could find. There were even similarities with the whole blood scene; alien's was acid, this one just lived forever and didn't like fire. I thought Morricone's score was quite good, the whole 5 minutes of it which I'm guessing is one of the reasons it got a Razzie nomination. Ha. Overall, a movie that doesn't pay much tribute to the original, nor does it manage to surpass it, not by a long shot. Not enough atmosphere, a poor script and a bad climax don't amount to much and probably the most inventive and positive thing in this whole mess is the very ending, which reminds us "The Thing" is definitely a Carpenter movie, sadly just not one of the better ones. 5/10