The Thing (2011 film)
The Thing is a 2011 American science fiction horror film directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., written by Eric Heisserer, and starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Eric Christian Olsen. It is a direct prequel to the 1982 film of the same name by John Carpenter, which was an adaptation of the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell. It tells the story of a team of scientists on a Norwegian Antarctic research station who discover a parasitic alien buried deep in the ice, realizing too late that it is still alive.
The Thing
- October 10, 2011 (Universal City)
- October 14, 2011 (United States)
103 minutes[1]
- United States
- Canada[2]
- English
- Norwegian
$38 million[3]
$31.5 million[4]
The Thing premiered on October 10, 2011, and was released on October 14, 2011. The film grossed $31.5 million against a $38 million budget and received mixed reviews from critics.
Plot[edit]
In the winter of 1982, an alien spacecraft and a nearby alien body are discovered buried in Antarctic ice by members of the Norwegian research station "Thule". American paleontologist Kate Lloyd is recruited by Dr. Sander Halvorson and his assistant Adam Finch to investigate. They fly to Thule Station in a helicopter where Kate meets pilots Sam Carter, Derek Jameson, and crewman Griggs. Arriving at Thule, they meet station chief Edvard Wolner, along with his team of Juliette, Karl, Jonas, Olav, Henrik, Colin, Peder, Lars, and Lars' dog.
The body is excavated in a block of ice and returned to Thule Station. During a party, Derek witnesses the Thing burst from the ice block. The team split into groups to search for the alien, they find Lars' dog dead. The alien drags Henrik into itself, spattering blood on Olav. The group kills the alien by igniting spilled fuel beneath it. An autopsy reveals that the alien's cells were copying Henrik's. Olav falls ill.
As Carter, Jameson, and Griggs are taking off in the helicopter to take Olav to a medical facility, Griggs transforms into a monstrous creature and attacks Olav, causing the helicopter to crash in the mountains. Kate discovers dental fillings in a bloodied shower and tells the team that the alien can assimilate and imitate its victims and that it is now living among them. Edvard orders the team to drive to the closest base; however, Juliette and Kate want to prevent anyone from leaving. As she lures Kate into an abandoned room to look for the keys to the vehicles, Juliette transforms and attempts to kill her. Kate escapes and the Juliette-Thing kills Karl. Lars kills the Juliette-Thing with a flamethrower and the team resolve to quarantine themselves until the threat is eliminated.
That night, Carter and Jameson stagger back from the helicopter crash. Suspected to be an alien, they are imprisoned in isolation. As the alien does not assimilate inorganic material, Kate proposes everyone to be checked for dental fillings. The test implicates Sander, Edvard, Adam, and Colin, who have no metallic fillings.
Lars is abducted while going to fetch Carter and Jameson for testing. Carter and Jameson break into the main building, shooting Peder dead and puncturing his flamethrower tank, causing an explosion that knocks Edvard unconscious. When brought to the main room, Edvard violently transforms into the Thing, infects Jonas, kills Jameson, and assimilates Adam to become Split Face. Kate burns Jonas and Jameson before they can fully transform, then she and Carter burn Split Face before pursuing Sander, who had been assimilated.
The Sander-Thing drives in a snowcat and goes to the spaceship, pursued by Kate and Carter. The spacecraft suddenly activates, the two become separated, with Kate falling through the ship and Carter proceeding through the main hatch. Kate encounters the monstrous Sander. She kills it with a grenade which shuts down the ship's engines. Kate finds Carter and notices that he is missing his left earring. Carter indicates the wrong ear so Kate burns the Carter-Thing preventing its escape and moves to the second snowcat before driving away to the Russian station.
The next morning, Thule's helicopter and pilot Matias return. Matias views the ruined station and the husk of Split Face with horror. Colin has gone into the radio comms room, where he is shown to have committed suicide with a straight razor. Lars, now revealed to have survived uninfected hiding in the building where Derek and Carter attacked him, demands at gunpoint that Matias show his teeth. Lars' dog, thought dead, emerges and runs away. Realizing that the dog is a Thing, Lars orders Matias to give chase in the helicopter.
Release[edit]
The film was premiered in New York City on October 10, 2011, and was released on October 14, 2011, in the United States.
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
The Thing grossed $8,493,665 over the opening weekend and ended up third on the box office chart. It was distributed to 2,996 theaters and spent a total of one week on the top 10 chart, before dropping down to the 16th position in its second week. It concluded its domestic run with a total of $16,928,670.[4] Its box office collections were called "an outright disappointment" by Box Office Mojo, who goes on to say "[the film] was naturally at a disadvantage: a vague "thing" doesn't give prospective audiences much to latch on to. It was therefore left up to fans of the original, who are already familiar with the concept, to turn out in strong numbers."[59] The film grossed $14,576,617 in foreign countries,[60] bringing the total worldwide box-office gross to $31,505,287.[4]
Critical response[edit]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 34% based on 174 reviews, with an average rating of 5/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "It serves the bare serviceable minimum for a horror flick, but The Thing is all boo-scares and a slave to the far superior John Carpenter version."[61] According to Metacritic, which assigned it a weighted average score of 49 out of 100 based on 31 critics, the film received "mixed or average reviews".[62] In CinemaScore polls users gave the film a "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[63]
Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film a rating of 3 out of 4, saying "While I wish van Heijningen's Thing weren't quite so in lust with the '82 model, it works because it respects that basic premise; and it exhibits a little patience, doling out its ickiest, nastiest moments in ways that make them stick".[64] Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com called it a "Loving prequel to a horror classic", saying "It's full of chills and thrills and isolated Antarctic atmosphere and terrific Hieronymus Bosch creature effects, and if it winks genially at the plot twists of Carpenter's film, it never feels even a little like some kind of inside joke."[65] James Berardinelli gave it three stars out of four, saying that it "offers a similar overall experience" to the 1982 film, but "without replicating styles and situations".[66] Christopher Orr of The Atlantic wrote that the narrative choices open to a prequel "exist on a spectrum from the unsurprising to the unfaithful", but van Heijningen "has managed this balancing act about as well as could be hoped" and although the line between homage and apery is a fine one, "in our age of steady knockoffs, retreads, and loosely branded money grabs, The Thing stands out as a competent entertainment, capably executed if not particularly inspired."[67] Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly rated the film three out of five stars and wrote, "Winstead makes for an appealing protagonist, and Kate is portrayed as competent without being thrust into some unlikely action-hero role."[68]
Kathleen Murphy of MSN Movies rated it two-and-a-half out of five stars, calling it "a subpar slasher movie tricked out with tired 'Ten Little Indians' tropes and rip-offs from both Carpenter and the Christian Nyby-Howard Hawks' 1951 version of the chilling tale that started it all, John W. Campbell Jr.'s Who Goes There?".[69] Jim Vejvoda of IGN Movies also rated the film two-and-a-half out of five, saying, "This incarnation of The Thing is much like the creature it depicts: An insidious, defective mimic of the real, er, thing. It's not an entirely lost cause, but it is a needless one."[70] Roger Ebert gave the film two and a half stars out of four, the same rating he gave the 1982 film.[71] In Patrick Sauriol of Coming Attractions' review, he states, "Stack it up against John Carpenter's version and it looks less shiny, but let's face it, if you're that kind of Thing fan you're going to go see the new movie anyway. Try and judge today's Thing on its own merits."[72] A brief review in Fangoria refers to the film as "Matthijs van Heijningen's prequel that proves modern CGI is no match for old-school makeup FX".[73]
Accolades[edit]
The film was nominated for two awards at the 38th Saturn Awards, but lost to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and X-Men: First Class.[74][75]
The Thing: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Tie-in media[edit]
On September 21, 2011, Dark Horse Comics released a three-part digital-only prequel comic, called The Thing: The Northman Nightmare, over a weekly basis. Taking place in Greenland, it follows a group of stranded Norsemen who must deal with the shape-shifting creature within a desolate village. The three-issue tale was written by Steve Niles, drawn by Patric Reynolds and colored by Dave Stewart.[82]
Plans were in development for a sequel, taking place with Kate's character battling the creature on an oil platform near the South Pole, however these plans were abandoned following the critical and financial failure of the film.[83]
Halloween Horror Nights event[edit]
The film was made into a maze at both Universal Studios Hollywood's and Universal Orlando Resort's 2011 Halloween Horror Nights events, having the subtitle Assimilation at Hollywood's version.[84]
Director's cut online campaign[edit]
In 2015, Aidan Cosky started a Change.org petition to release the "pilot version", which was promoted by Dread Central even though the petition closed due to a lack of followers.[85] In 2020, the following social media hashtags: #ReleaseThePilotVersion[86][87] and #ReleaseTheStudioADIcut[88][89] were started in response to Zack Snyder's Justice League and the released BTS footage from Studio ADI on YouTube,[90] while Bloody Disgusting and NerdBot published articles and YouTube videos calling it one of the most anticipated director's cut in horror films.[91][92][93][94]