Thingummybob
Director: Matthijs van Heijningen,
Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ulrich Thomsen, Joel Edgerton, Eric Christian Olsen
Essentially a prequel to John Carpenter’s cult 1982 movie, this Thing is a gore-filled sc-fi horror-fest that harks back to the classic B movies of yesteryear.
Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Winstead) discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up; and when a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew’s pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time.
While the latest reincarnation doesn’t score any points for originality or improvement, it is surprisingly deft in maintaining what already works and also adds in a few new twists and doesn’t make the mistake of trying to explain that which is best left mysterious.
Shadowy and atmospheric, sumptuously photographed by Michel Abramowicz and scored with some uniquely haunting melodies, the film keeps interest levels as high as the characters’ paranoia.
Despite never quite reaching the heights of John Carpenter’s groundbreaking 1982 original, the film is sufficiently horrific, tense and well-paced. It’s good but not quite the real Thing.
Genre: Horror | Mystery | Sci-Fi
Age Restriction: R
Runtime: 103 min
