Film Review #11: The Thing

     Once again I realize I've been slacking off with the reviews but to my credit, I've actually watched movies during this time. I just haven't been able to get to a computer to write about them... As evidence by my 15 unread e-mails stemming from Friday I haven't had time for and deemed unimportant. So before I e-mail complaints, and financial departments on with a review...

     It's almost Halloween! And you know what that means!?! My yearly movie that I deem to be my "Halloween movie". Now to be my Halloween movie it doesn't have to be a horror movie or really even scary, it just has to have some sort of element that seems Halloween-ish, it can be zombies, kids trick-or-treating or a crazy alien that devours you and then replicates your cells. Enter The Thing.

     The Thing, is a prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 classic that goes by the same title. Which itself is a remake of a 1951 film entitled "The Thing From Another World" often referred to, however, as "The Thing".

     This prequel centers in on the alien specimen before it gets to Kurt Russell, hence the tagline "It's not human. Yet." Aside from being grammatically incorrect, it's about all you need to know about this film. It takes place during winter 1982 at a scientific research station in Antartica. After a group of Norwegian scientists discover an alien creature and what appears to be a ship deep in the bowels of the Antartic ice. After the discovery they contact Dr. Sander Halverson a so-called "expert" who travels to Antartica to see the discovery but not before his research assistant Adam Goodman, invites a friend, Dr. Kate Lloyd, an american paleontologist invited to help identify the possible alien specimen.

     Upon arrival they discover the creature frozen in a block of ice that they elect to remove from the ice as they assume it had died 100,000 years ago when it's believed the alien aircraft originally crashed on earth. So after cutting the ice around it they transport the block of ice back and place it in the research station where Dr. Halverson decides to take a tissue sample from the creature much to the shagrin of Dr. Kate Lloyd and we see the first real friction between the characters. After a couple of hours of thawing the creature busts out of the ice and he does so with a vengeance, where he begins to pick off and copy the research station residents. Will it ever be stopped?

     Now "The Thing" is classified as a horror film, although it's not your usual slash-and-gore kind of horror that you generally see in Hollywood's makeover of classic horror films no matter where they fall on the R.P.S. scale (Remake, Prequel, Sequel) as it generally erred more so to the Thriller side, perhaps by fiscal constraints considering it's relatively small 38 million budget, for comparisons sake the recently released Dream House, a horror movie that takes place almost entirely in one space had a 50 million dollar budget. So 38 isn't a whole lot to go around for slash and gore when you need to make an alien aircraft, and all those ice vehicles and helicopters they used.

     They spent next to no time on character development outside of Dr. Lloyd, with the other characters, you had just enough information on them to either feel bad when they died, feel good that they did die or loved watching them handle those flamethrowers. It's espescially hard to make a horror movie nowadays in a frigid climate considering we're so used to seeing half naked girls getting killed mid-orgasm that it's odd not to see, but in this film it's good that you don't because that just wouldn't work in Antartica. So kudos to the director for not slutting up the characters, including my future wife Ramona Flowers (Still the best movie of 2010 FYI). The visuals were passable at best, probably a mistake for not filming in digital when there's so much CGI in the film to make it look more even, however when no CGI was on the screen it was absolutely stunning as I have long been a fan of movies filmed with a good ol' 35MM, and thus made the mountainous scenes all that much more better.

     Overall, this movie isn't spectacular, in fact it's barely even memorable. But it's a lot of fun to watch about once every year or so (maybe even on Halloween) and if you're a fan of the recent R.P.S.'s then you should be more than happy with this film, regardless of critics thinking every classic shouldn't be touched with a 20 foot pole.

Film Review #7 : 30 Days Of Night

     Following my recent trend I thought I would continue to watch graphic novel based vampire movies and today I worked up the courage to watch 30 Days Of Night...

     30 Days Of Night is as I understand it is a survival horror based of a mini-series of comic books written by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith. Again I only had time to read the first comic before I watched the movie, but it appears that the movie at least attempts to follow the story line.

     Lets jump straight to the plot, this is a franchise thick with backstory and imagination. Our story starts in Barrow, Alaska, the town "at the top of the world", just as the townspeople are preparing for a month long night, 30 days of night. The town population drops by about four hundred people as most of the residents leave for other cities. The few that stay behind are greeted by a stranger (Ben Foster) that wandered into town covered in dirt and grime, strangely after all the sled dogs were murdered. As soon as the stranger asks for a bowl of raw hamburger meat things start going downhill. Small things at first, vandalism, a couple violent deaths, a head on a stick or two, then the power goes out, and the town is plunged into total darkness. The local sheriff (Josh Hartnett) discovers the first body, or lack there of, and urges the townsfolk into their homes and to prepare their weapons, it does them little good of course as the town soon erupts into an orgie of blood and fire, you see a band of vampires has followed the stranger into town.

     This franchise completely redesigned the classic vampire. Gone are the suave, romantic bloodsuckers, these vampires are the ultimate apex predator, six times faster and stronger than a human, with a mouth full of razor sharp fangs and claws sharp enough to punch through a skull. This I believe is the closest a vampire can get to reality. These vampires led by Marlow (Danny Huston) are more than a match for a town of a hundred and fifty humans, and now that the sun has set the town is theirs for 30 days. All survivors have to risk it all just to last the month.

     As I sit here stirring coffee and cream into my sugar I realize that the movie isn't about the vampires, its about human nature, about sacrifices and the lengths of which we will go to protect those we love. Throughout the movie the characters are forced to put aside their lives and push themselves to the limit just to survive, when their friends and family are dead or undead is when they find their strength. It takes a bit to see past the darkness and find the moral of the story, but the darkness is what makes the movie.

     Darkness, yes, as the title states the sun has set, turning the town into a veritable hell, the dark sky and pure white snow are often contrasted beautifully by the stunning red of blood and fire, brightening what is otherwise a bland colour palette. The acting is refreshingly believable and for I never quite figured out if the film was completely CGI or if the picture was just that sharp even on my horribly old SD TV.

     My final judgement is that the acting was near top notch, the characters were believable, the vampires were fresh and the plot was thick enough to create a beautifully complex story, so pick it up but make sure you leave the lights on...