John Carpenter's “The Thing” ranks near the top of any list of obvious future classics that were initially dismissed by audiences and critics. This is the most basic piece of trivia about the movie. Nine years after the film's unsuccessful theatrical run, enough of a cult following had built up to make a continuation of some sort commercially viable. That's when “Darkman” screenwriter Chuck Pfarrer pitched Universal on a sequel. The studio passed on the treatment but it would re-emerge as a comic book from Dark Horse. (Re-titled “The Thing from Another World,” to distinguish itself from Marvel's ever-lovin', blue-eyed variety.) Three further comic book arcs sprung off from that one, proving that there was demand for more Things. This would kick off a series of attempts to sequelize Carpenter's remake but, in the metamorphic nature of the alien threat, always in mediums other than film. There was an almost well received video game in 2002. Three years after that, Frank Darabont attempted to produce a four hour long television mini-series for the Sci-Fi Channel. This would've depicted what happens when the Thing reaches a populated area. That didn't get made but, in 2007, you could walk through a Halloween Horror Nights maze based on the film.
All of this suggested a serious desire to replicate the 1982 film. During the horror reboot hungry new millennium, rumors of a remake of Carpenter's remake sprung from the ice. Quickly realizing that an imperfect clone would be unflatteringly compared to the progenitor, it was decided to follow the second most hacky trend of the time and do a prequel about the Norwegian camp instead. Dutchman Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. quickly boarded as director and a new “Thing” finally grew. Much like another horror reboot Universal made around the same time, the film was subjected to clueless executive meddling and reshoots. Fans and critics generally saw the prequel as an unconvincing copy of what came before. Though it did duplicate Carpenter's work in the sense that it also didn't make much money at the box office... Despite general audiences rejecting the premise twice now, there has been some hubbub recently about another stab at “The Thing.” It remains to be seen if anything will sprout from that but it did prompt me to revisit this prequel, to see if it was better than I recalled from a decade ago.
And so we return to the frozen wasteland of Antarctica, slightly before the last time we visited it. A Norwegian research team from Thule Station are crossing the ice when their vehicle plunges through the surface. Within, they make two startling discoveries: An apparent otherworldly space craft and, a short distance away from it, the frozen remains of its very inhuman passenger. Kate Lloyd, an American paleontologist who specializes in excavating fossils from the ice, is called in to assist. The team successfully removes the hunk of glacier containing the life form and takes it back to the station. Team leader Dr. Halvorson is ecstatic to have made the paradigm shifting discovery that man is not alone in the universe. Kate and the others, including American helicopter pilot Sam, are less certain. That feeling grows when the thing in the ice breaks out, springing back to life after millions of years. Worst yet, the creature possesses the ability to assimilate and perfectly replicate living tissue. Now, much like an American team will discover in the near future, the residents of the station must contend with the shapeshifting Thing and their own paranoia about who could possibly be it.
While the uncertainty of its ending has been endlessly discussed, Carpenter's "Thing" is greatly served by ambiguity all throughout. Who among the cast is the monster is rarely certain. The "what" around the creature is largely explained, "where" remains a vague answer of outer space, and the "why" is totally unrevealed. What happened at the Norwegian base is a purposely intriguing question, meant to draw the audience in further and foreshadow what will happen to the Americans soon, but the specific details were a mystery. All of these touches are what makes "The Thing" the intriguing, involving film it is. The prequel, meanwhile, seeks to answer as many questions as possible. Heijningen and his team went through the exploratory scene set at the abandoned base with a fine-tooth comb. They then built their film around showing us the exact steps that led to each little detail. Even minor ones like an axe embedded in a wall or an overturned shelf. It's a well-intentioned but flawed thesis, misunderstanding the purpose of a scene meant largely to entice and forebode as backstory that must be breathlessly detailed. This is the kind of fan boy brain better applied to wikia pages than narratives.
This is not the main bone of contention people have to pick with 2011's "The Thing" though. No, the prequel was vexed by the exact annoying bullshit everyone feared from a modern day follow-up. Tom Woodruff Jr.'s Amalgamated Dynamics created practical creature effects for the project and they were used on-set. After test audiences complained that the results "looked like an eighties movie," CGI was hastily plastered over the rubber and latex. The effects team were so dismayed at the last minute changes that Woodruff ended up crowdfunding his own "Thing" inspired, all-practical (and totally forgettable) movie. Heijningen, meanwhile, has expressed regret over kowtowing to a clueless studio. Some internet users have petitioned for a release of the unaltered footage, if not a full director's cut of the prequel. This presents a tidy, fan-favorite narrative, of the promising young filmmaker having his vision ruined by air-headed execs. Of a disregard of hand-made artistry in favor of shiny, modern technology that will age far quicker and far worse.
Now, I have no doubt that the practical creature make-up was easily superior to the rushed out CGI the final film utilizes. The digital effects are often poorly combined with the live actors. A face splitting in two or the final adversary both look especially unconvincing. However, Woodruff has clarified that his team's designs were maintained, the puppetry merely replaced with identical if less convincing CGI. None of the monstrous forms on-display here compare in any way to the work of a sleep-deprived, coked-up, young and hungry Rob Bottin. The original film featured asymmetrical creations, flesh that twisted and warped with a vicious nightmare logic. It combined the very familiar frailty of our human bodies with unexpected sights and sounds, to create a truly alien seeming entity. The prequel, meanwhile, always seems to center a face or jaws in its mutations. There are a lot of vagina dentata like maws or stabbing tentacles shooting forward like arrows. Bodies bend and flop around but are still recognizably human. The one clever gag the film has, an arm suddenly detaching, is quickly squandered by the film returning to gaping, toothy, screeching mouths. While the mediocre digital blanket job does the designs no favor, they repeatedly show a lack of imagination. Never once did the transformations make me wonder what the hell I was looking at, which is kind of an essential quality for this material.
That lack of imagination is apparent in other elements of the film. While not technically a remake, 2011's “The Thing” essentially operates as one. Many of the iconic moments have similar sequences here. The beloved blood test is reprised, this time with fillings in teeth being used as the indicator that someone is still human. The aforementioned bit with the arm clearly recalls that time a head skittered across the floor. The prequel also concludes with a stand-off between the hero and the monster in its own lair, climaxing in a fiery explosion. Rather than expand on the first film, the script is content to merely repeat what worked before. Except Matthijs van Heijiningen Jr. isn't John Carpenter, with the rest of the crew clearly being similar downgrades. Instead of a score that emphasizes quiet unease, dramatic moments are punctuated with loud notes on the soundtrack. Instead of focusing on generating a feeling of isolation, the film goes for shit jumping out of the dark at you.
2011's “The Thing” functions a lot like a modern legacy sequel, in the way it seems designed to simply remind viewers of a better movie with most of the changes being cosmetic. While Carpenter's “Thing” is famously devoid of female characters, this one has two. Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as Kate. You'd think inserting a woman into an all-male space, especially in a story set in the early eighties, would present opportunities for commentary on gender dynamics or sexism or something. Kate is treated badly by Dr. Halvorson but not because she's a woman. It's because he's an asshole who is angered by anybody who challenges his plans. If a man had played this part, her function in the story would be entirely unchanged. Which is either the most progressive position you can take or renders the choice so arbitrary as to make you wonder why it was done at all. Having the French doctor also be a woman doesn't make this a male-exclusive environment anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.
Perhaps I'm nitpicking, complaining about what a film isn't and not about what it is. However, if a quasi-remake does little more than make changes simply to be different from the original, something has gone astray. A pun about how the authors of this "Thing" were not as good at copying as their titular menace is unavoidable. Personally, I think if you are going to make a belated follow-up to an iconic film, you're better served not blatantly emulating scenes and story beats from such a highly regarded work. Maybe the next remake should go back to the monster being a plant guy. What makes this "Thing" more unnecessary is that a far more clever remix of Carpenter's classic was released the year before. Peter Watts' short story "The Things" retells the 1982 events from the perspective of the alien, aghast that Earthlings are unable to shapeshift and unwilling to be assimilated. I don't know how you'd translate that story cinematically but it would make for a more interesting variation than this unimaginative prequel. [5/10]
All of this suggested a serious desire to replicate the 1982 film. During the horror reboot hungry new millennium, rumors of a remake of Carpenter's remake sprung from the ice. Quickly realizing that an imperfect clone would be unflatteringly compared to the progenitor, it was decided to follow the second most hacky trend of the time and do a prequel about the Norwegian camp instead. Dutchman Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. quickly boarded as director and a new “Thing” finally grew. Much like another horror reboot Universal made around the same time, the film was subjected to clueless executive meddling and reshoots. Fans and critics generally saw the prequel as an unconvincing copy of what came before. Though it did duplicate Carpenter's work in the sense that it also didn't make much money at the box office... Despite general audiences rejecting the premise twice now, there has been some hubbub recently about another stab at “The Thing.” It remains to be seen if anything will sprout from that but it did prompt me to revisit this prequel, to see if it was better than I recalled from a decade ago.
While the uncertainty of its ending has been endlessly discussed, Carpenter's "Thing" is greatly served by ambiguity all throughout. Who among the cast is the monster is rarely certain. The "what" around the creature is largely explained, "where" remains a vague answer of outer space, and the "why" is totally unrevealed. What happened at the Norwegian base is a purposely intriguing question, meant to draw the audience in further and foreshadow what will happen to the Americans soon, but the specific details were a mystery. All of these touches are what makes "The Thing" the intriguing, involving film it is. The prequel, meanwhile, seeks to answer as many questions as possible. Heijningen and his team went through the exploratory scene set at the abandoned base with a fine-tooth comb. They then built their film around showing us the exact steps that led to each little detail. Even minor ones like an axe embedded in a wall or an overturned shelf. It's a well-intentioned but flawed thesis, misunderstanding the purpose of a scene meant largely to entice and forebode as backstory that must be breathlessly detailed. This is the kind of fan boy brain better applied to wikia pages than narratives.
Now, I have no doubt that the practical creature make-up was easily superior to the rushed out CGI the final film utilizes. The digital effects are often poorly combined with the live actors. A face splitting in two or the final adversary both look especially unconvincing. However, Woodruff has clarified that his team's designs were maintained, the puppetry merely replaced with identical if less convincing CGI. None of the monstrous forms on-display here compare in any way to the work of a sleep-deprived, coked-up, young and hungry Rob Bottin. The original film featured asymmetrical creations, flesh that twisted and warped with a vicious nightmare logic. It combined the very familiar frailty of our human bodies with unexpected sights and sounds, to create a truly alien seeming entity. The prequel, meanwhile, always seems to center a face or jaws in its mutations. There are a lot of vagina dentata like maws or stabbing tentacles shooting forward like arrows. Bodies bend and flop around but are still recognizably human. The one clever gag the film has, an arm suddenly detaching, is quickly squandered by the film returning to gaping, toothy, screeching mouths. While the mediocre digital blanket job does the designs no favor, they repeatedly show a lack of imagination. Never once did the transformations make me wonder what the hell I was looking at, which is kind of an essential quality for this material.
2011's “The Thing” functions a lot like a modern legacy sequel, in the way it seems designed to simply remind viewers of a better movie with most of the changes being cosmetic. While Carpenter's “Thing” is famously devoid of female characters, this one has two. Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as Kate. You'd think inserting a woman into an all-male space, especially in a story set in the early eighties, would present opportunities for commentary on gender dynamics or sexism or something. Kate is treated badly by Dr. Halvorson but not because she's a woman. It's because he's an asshole who is angered by anybody who challenges his plans. If a man had played this part, her function in the story would be entirely unchanged. Which is either the most progressive position you can take or renders the choice so arbitrary as to make you wonder why it was done at all. Having the French doctor also be a woman doesn't make this a male-exclusive environment anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.
You might not have heard of Raju Patel but he had a curious life and career. The son of an India born filmmaker, he was born and raised in Kenya. His dad, Sharad Patel, had some success with the biopic about Idi Amin where imprisoned journalist Denis Hills played himself. With business dealings in both England and America, Patel would have a pretty big hit with sex comedy “Bacholer Party” at only 24 years old. He would work on Disney movies, Hindi-language productions, and collaborated with random names like Mark Damon and Michael Jackson. He then checked out of life early, dying in his forties of colon cancer. Despite his eccentric career, Raju Patel would only direct one feature. That would be “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro,” an international co-production that nonetheless still qualifies as one of the few horror movies made in Kenya. It's a trap-on-VHS cast-off that has a pretty good title, which is why I remember it. After all, if you're going to put a famous African mountain in a horror movie, probably a good idea to go with the one that has “Kill” in its name.
Within the shadow of the titular mountain peak are the key locations the film takes place in: The small village of Namanga, a school building for the local youths, a mining operation overseen by an Australian named Chris Tucker, and a hotel/bar that largely serves the miners. The area is caught in an on-going drought and it's causing the local wildlife to behave aggressively. American zoologist Jack Ringtree, while awaiting for his wife to arrive in the village, discovers a child orphaned after her mother is killed by unknown animals. This proceeds further violent attacks, the responsible party being a large troop of vicious baboons. Jack tries to alert the authorities and evacuate the area but his concerns are dismissed. It's not too long before the baboon attacks increase in frequency and intensity, soon trapping the locals within the hotel.
At the same time, the premise of “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” may strike some as, at the very least, unlikely. Baboons are not historically known to be man-eaters and, in some lights, can be kind of cute. The film tries to deflect this thought by claiming to be based on a true story. (An internet search on the topic mostly redirects back to this movie, meaning it couldn't have been too well known an event.) Despite that, “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” still generates outrageous chuckles more often than gasps. A rather robotic looking baboon puppet is used for a few scenes. I do applaud the actor playing an airplane pilot in one sequence, who keeps on flying while a very real mad ape is going at his head. Despite that intensity, it's still a deliriously silly sequence. Vicious as they can appear, I guess there is something inherently comical about monkeys sometimes. Still, in its last third, when the film becomes something of a siege picture about a stranded group of survivors hiding in a single location from the rampaging horde, it does generate some okay tension. The wind blowing on the plains at night, wild beast with glowing eyes emerging out of the darkness through a broken window, isn't a bad effect.
The underwhelming character work pairs with an abrupt and unsatisfying ending, though I suppose it's as logical a conclusion as you'd expect from a story about a drought. “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” never quite comes together. The script is too thinly sketched and unable to mine consistent thrills out of its fuzzy threats. Which isn't to say that there isn't some novelty to a baboons go bananas horror flick, especially one set on the actual African continent. (Which distinguishes this one from “Shakma,” whose trailer is slightly funnier, on the short list of baboon-sploitation flicks.) Raju Patel, or at least the team he hired, does show a semi-decent handling of the material, suggesting he probably could have made better movies than this one further down the line. I guess the experience of wrangling a pack of literal baboons did not endear the directional process to the guy. This is definitely a film I wanted to like more than I actually did, if only because of its novelty, but there's not quite enough here to make it stick. Though that airplane attack scene is hilarious. [6/10]
I feel like any time I review a modern streaming series, all I do is complain about how these shows are paced, plotted, and structured. The fourth episode of "Wednesday" is a case study example of how sloppy this style is. The show has stacked up a collection of plot threads that it can leap between whenever it wants, with no concern for tonal consistency, satisfying pacing, or overall coherence. This installment sees Wednesday digging deeper into her investigation of the wide-eyed monster in the woods, presenting her evidence to an annoyed and stunned Sheriff Galpin. She discovers that it takes body parts from each of its victims and seems to find its cave lair. She spots some scratches on Xavier's neck and uncovers his secret art studio, which includes paintings of the beast. Suspecting him of being connected to the killer, Wednesday instead ends up asking Xavier out to the upcoming school dance to cover for herself.
This uncorks a mess of soap opera-like romantic entanglements. Enid goes to the dance with another guy, one of the bullies in town, to make Ajax jealous after he stood her up the other night. Xavier apparently genuinely likes Wednesday and, when he discovers that she only asked him out because of the mystery, he asks his siren ex-girlfriend to erase his memories of the Addams. But Wednesday still has a date to the dance cause Thing, of his own accord, asked normie townie boy Tyler to take her instead. That's not all of the melodrama at work here, as nerdy beekeeping boy Eugene is also harboring a crush on Enid. Oh my god, what the fuck. How is this an "Addams Family" show? Netflix really did take a premise designed to deliver goofy, morbid sight gags and turned it into a "Twilight" style supernatural romance for teenagers and fandom-brained Tumblr users.
By 2022, however, the comic strip and sitcom that spawned her was long since overshadowed by the snarky goth girl archetype that Wednesday Addams became in the popular consciousness. "Wednesday" is a show more for people who saw the Barry Sonnefield films as a kid and caught a crush on Christina Ricci or fans of some YouTube cosplay account than anything else. I mean, the character imprinted on young me too, leading to an unfortunate life long fascination for women with dark hair, black clothes, cyanide wits, and undiagnosed BPD. Tim Burton deserves a lot of blame for the commodification of the goth subculture too, which makes his involvement with this show almost satirically on-the-nose. This episode really gets at how annoying this entire shtick has become in two moments. That is when a character tells Wednesday how he admires how free and unburdened she is by social expectations. Once again, it is hammered that Wednesday is a self-styled outcast, unpopular with her peers. A bit hard to buy that when she's at the center of two separate crushes in this episode alone and her family clearly has a long history with the school she's attending. Another scene has Wednesday criticizing the "objectification of women and the male gaze," a tweet misconstrued into dialogue. The episode then features the obviously movie star pretty Jenna Ortega doing a wacky girl dance at the goth prom to a Cramps song. It is a moment so tailor-made to appeal to people with a fetish for superficial strangeness that it's really as objectifying and othering for the young woman at its center as a strip tease would be.
Of course, that scene became a viral sensation and is probably the main reason "Wednesday" became such a hit for Netflix. Like I said, I'm part of the problem. I liked that scene. It is one of the few moments "Woe What a Night" emerges from its own mess of subplots and rehashed cliches to show a spark of energy or wit. The "Carrie" homage that follows is predictable as can be but Ortega's enthusiasm and then disappointment with the stunt actually got a laugh out of me. So did how she stumbles through her attempt to ask the long-haired pretty boy to the dance. Or the genuinely cool shot of her and Enid in their dorm, split right down the middle between their two distinctive aesthetics. All of this suggests that if "Wednesday" was as much of a sitcom as the show that spawned it, merely about contrasting the protagonist's particular behavior against stratified adolescent social rituals, it would probably be consistently funny. Alas, such a humble pleasure is beyond the modern media landscape and I have four more episodes of this show, that I very stupidly promised to review, to wade through. [5/10]
This uncorks a mess of soap opera-like romantic entanglements. Enid goes to the dance with another guy, one of the bullies in town, to make Ajax jealous after he stood her up the other night. Xavier apparently genuinely likes Wednesday and, when he discovers that she only asked him out because of the mystery, he asks his siren ex-girlfriend to erase his memories of the Addams. But Wednesday still has a date to the dance cause Thing, of his own accord, asked normie townie boy Tyler to take her instead. That's not all of the melodrama at work here, as nerdy beekeeping boy Eugene is also harboring a crush on Enid. Oh my god, what the fuck. How is this an "Addams Family" show? Netflix really did take a premise designed to deliver goofy, morbid sight gags and turned it into a "Twilight" style supernatural romance for teenagers and fandom-brained Tumblr users.
Of course, that scene became a viral sensation and is probably the main reason "Wednesday" became such a hit for Netflix. Like I said, I'm part of the problem. I liked that scene. It is one of the few moments "Woe What a Night" emerges from its own mess of subplots and rehashed cliches to show a spark of energy or wit. The "Carrie" homage that follows is predictable as can be but Ortega's enthusiasm and then disappointment with the stunt actually got a laugh out of me. So did how she stumbles through her attempt to ask the long-haired pretty boy to the dance. Or the genuinely cool shot of her and Enid in their dorm, split right down the middle between their two distinctive aesthetics. All of this suggests that if "Wednesday" was as much of a sitcom as the show that spawned it, merely about contrasting the protagonist's particular behavior against stratified adolescent social rituals, it would probably be consistently funny. Alas, such a humble pleasure is beyond the modern media landscape and I have four more episodes of this show, that I very stupidly promised to review, to wade through. [5/10]
As with past installments I've covered, I know the twist ending of "To Serve Man," the 24th episode of "The Twilight Zone's" third season, very well. The rest of the episode is discussed less often. Alien beings known as the Kanamit arrived on Earth. They come in peace and, moreover, generosity. The beings speak to the United Nations from a book and offer endless treasures. While people are skeptical at first, the Kanamits lives up to their offers. They turn barren deserts into verdant fields. They offer impenetrable force fields to each nation, ending all international conflict overnight. They also willingly submit themselves to any tests the Earth governments ask for. Among these is an attempt by the American government to translate the significant book the aliens brought with them, whose title means "To Serve Man." Chambers, a cryptographer, and his assistant Patty work at the task. As pleasure cruises from Earth to the Kanamit home world begin, Chambers decides to join such a ride. As he boards the vessel, Patty arrives to inform him of the book's true purpose...
The outlook of Rod Serling's work was usually pessimistic. Many of his stories reflect a belief that, while the individual person might be good, the human race is destined to destroy itself over petty grievances. "To Serve Man" is a bit unusual in that an outside force is the antagonist. Nine foot tall, dome-headed aliens arrive extending a glad hand only for it to hide more sinister intentions. It is tempting to read the moral as xenophobic or at least extremely cautious: Don't trust any offer that seems too good to be true. It reminds me of Hansel and Gretel, where endless generosity and a shelter in a storm are only a precursor to pure predation. All that kindness is to disarm you. All those sweets are just to fatten you up. While "To Serve Man" is ultimately cynical in its perspective, I do think Serling is criticizing mankind's preference for easy answers and gluttony more than anything else. Alien saviors arrive and resolve all our problems instantly. It makes us so happy that we can barely stop to consider their motivations. Moreover, the Kanamit promises endless pleasures too. Why, as a man boarding their ship excitedly shouts, they even have baseball on their home world. Maybe that fairy tale comparison is apt and the episode should be taken as a simple warning that good intentions are not always what they seem. Now, as then, tis simple truth, sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth. Literally, in this case.
"To Serve Man" doesn't have the intense expressionistic visuals of "Eye of the Beholder" nor the surreal nightmare logic of "It's A Good Life." Director Richard L. Bare – who would go on to direct "Wicked, Wicked" and 166 episodes of "Green Acres" – mostly keeps things simple. Though I do like the Kanamit being introduced first as a towering shadow on the wall before we see its face. Beloved tall guy Richard Kiel plays the lead alien. While the bulging cranium and white robes are typical of extraterrestrial depictions of the time, the Kanamit communicating strictly via telepathy means their faces are unmoving. Their eyes seem to project dull, animalistic instincts while their mouth droops open slightly, like a dog salivating over a ham bone. Maybe that's meant to be a hint to their motivations being hunger, not kindness. The ending is one of bitter irony, the title being revealed as a sick punchline, and the final moments being a grim conclusion that the wilier predator is always destined to eat the lesser one. Pretty good stuff. A tasty meal served quickly and effectively. [7/10]
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