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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - October 14th

"THE THING" released in 2011

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When a team of Norwegian and American scientists who discover an alien buried deep in the ice of Antarctica, realizing too late that it is still alive, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s prequel to the cult classic horror film, The Thing!

In 1982, an alien spacecraft is discovered beneath the Antarctic ice by a team from a Norwegian research base: Edvard (Trond Espen Seim), Jonas (Kristofer Hivju), Olav (Jan Gunnar Røise), Karl (Carsten Bjørnlund), Juliette (Kim Bubbs), Lars (Jørgen Langhelle), Henrik (Jo Adrian Haavind), Colin (Jonathan Lloyd Walker), and Peder (Stig Henrik Hoff). Columbia University paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is recruited by Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) and his assistant Adam Finch (Eric Christian Olsen) to investigate the discovery. They travel to the Norwegian base, Thule Station, located in Antarctica near U.S. Outpost 31, in a helicopter manned by Carter (Joel Edgerton), Derek (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), and Griggs (Paul Braunstein). After viewing the spacecraft, Kate, Sander, and Adam are told the group also discovered an alien body from the crash, buried in the ice nearby and, in the afternoon, the body is brought to the base in a block of ice. That evening, while the team celebrates their find, Derek sees the alien burst from the ice and escape the building. The team searches for the creature and discovers that it killed Lars' dog. Olav and Henrik find the alien, which then grabs and engulfs Henrik. The rest of the group arrive and set fire to the creature, killing it. An autopsy of the scorched alien corpse reveals that its cells were consuming and imitating Henrik's own. While Derek, Carter, Griggs and a sick Olav take the helicopter to seek help, Kate discovers bloody dental fillings near a blood-soaked shower and runs outside to flag down the helicopter after it takes off. When it attempts to land, Griggs transforms into the Thing and attacks Olav, causing the helicopter to spin out of control and crash in the mountains. The team decides to send a party to the closest base, but Kate confronts them with her theory that the Thing can imitate them and has likely already done so. Kate is proved right later when Juliette transforms and tries to attack Kate.

That night, Edvard, Kate and Lars find Carter and Derek stumbling into base, half frozen. The team refuses to believe that they could have survived the crash. Kate has them isolated until a test can be prepared to verify they are human. Adam and Sander had started to work on a test, but the lab is set on fire in the few minutes it's left unattended. Kate proposes another test, believing that the Thing cannot imitate inorganic material. She inspects everyone and singles out those without amalgam dental fillings: Sander, Edvard, Adam, and Colin, while herself, Peder, Jonas and Lars are proven human. Lars and Jonas go to retrieve Carter and Derek for testing, and discover they have broken out, and in a tense stand-off, Peder is killed and Edvard is knocked unconscious. When brought to the rec room, Edvard transforms and infects Jonas and kills Derek before assimilating Adam. Kate torches the infected Jonas and Derek's body before she and Carter pursue the Thing. While the pair searches, Sander is ambushed by the Thing and Colin hides in the radio room and isn't seen again. They get separated and the Thing, into which Edvard and Adam are now fused, corners Carter in the kitchen. Kate burns it as it sprints toward Carter, causing it to run straight through the wall and crash into the snow, dead. Kate and Carter then last see Sander, who has been infected, drive off into the blizzard. Realizing the Thing is attempting to get get back to it's ship, Kate and Carter pursue him in the remaining snowcat, intending to destroy the Thing once and for all!

[celebrating with the team]
Lars: [In Norwegian] We found a fucking alien! Cheers!

Top:   The Norwegians find the Ting, frozen in the ice;

Above:   American paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is recruited to join the research team in Antarctica.

After creating the Dawn of the Dead remake, producers Marc Abraham and Eric Newman began to look through the Universal Studios library to find new properties to work on. Upon finding John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing, the two convinced Universal to create a prequel instead of a remake, as they felt that remaking Carpenter's film would be like "paint(ing) a moustache on the Mona Lisa" - however, the prequel still has the title of the original film, because they couldn't think of a subtitle (for example, The Thing: Begins) that sounded good. Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr. became involved in the project when his first planned feature film, a sequel to the Dawn of the Dead remake, a zombie film taking place in Las Vegas written and produced by Zack Snyder, who directed the Dawn of the Dead remake, and co-produced by Abraham and Newman, called Army of the Dead, was cancelled by the studio three months before production began. Needing to start all over again, he asked his agent to see if there was a The Thing project in development, since Alien and The Thing are his favorite films. In early 2009, Variety reported the launch of a project to film a prequel — possibly following MacReady's brother during the events leading up to the opening moments of the 1982 film — with van Heijningen Jr. as director and Ronald D. Moore as writer. The first draft of the screenplay was written by Moore, but Universal then opted to have the screenplay rewritten by Eric Heisserer. Heisserer explained that in writing the script, it was necessary for him to research all the information that was revealed about the Norwegian camp from the first film, down to the smallest details, so that it could be incorporated into the prequel in order to create a consistent backstory.

In order to not try to compete with Kurt Russell's portrayal of the 1982 film's protagonist, R.J. MacReady, the character of Kate Lloyd was designed to have traits in common with the character Ellen Ripley from the Alien film series. Filmmakers turned to actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead to play the character, and cast fellow actors Joel Edgerton, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Eric Christian Olsen, and Kim Bubbs in supporting roles. van Heijningen, Jr also cast actual Norwegian and Danish actors to play the Norwegian characters; including Ulrich Thomsen (as the arrogant lead scientist Dr. Sander Halvorson), Trond Espen Seim, Jørgen Langhelle, Kristofer Hivju, and Stig Henrik Hoff, among others. Addressing rumors stating that John Carpenter wished to have a cameo appearance in the film, Carpenter himself corrected these in an interview for the fan site "Outpost 31", in August 2012. "[Those] rumors are not true", Carpenter stated in the interview.

TRIVIA:   The scene where Sander and Finch recruit Kate to come to Antarctica is the only scene in this film or in John Carpenter's film that doesn't take place in Antarctica.

Top:   The team examines the charred remains of one of the Thing's imitations in an attempt to discover a way to kill it;

Above:   In the finale, remaining survivors Kate and pilot Carter (Joel Edgerton) pursue the Thing back to it's spacecraft to stop it from escaping!

Production of the prequel began at Pinewood Toronto Studios, Port Lands on March 22, 2010. On set, the director had a laptop computer which contained "a million" screen captures of the Carpenter film, which he used as a point of reference to keep the Norwegian camp visually consistent with the first film (the filmmakers used Kurt Russell's height as an estimate as to how big the sets would have to be to faithfully recreate the Norwegian camp as no blueprints existed from the Carpenter movie!). To design the interior of the crashed alien spacecraft, production designer Sean Haworth had to recreate what little was shown of the spacecraft in the Carpenter film, then "fill the gaps" for what was not originally shown. Haworth and a team of approximately twelve others then created the inside of the ship as a several story-high interior set constructed mostly out of a combination of foam, plaster, fiberglass, and plywood. The ship was designed specifically to look as if it were not made to accommodate humans, but rather alien creatures of different size and shape who could walk on any surface. A section of the craft called the "pod room" was designed to imply the alien creatures manning it had collected specimens of different alien species from around the universe for a zoological expedition.

Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. of Amalgamated Dynamics created the practical creature effects for the film, and who, in addition to creating the effects for the human-Thing transformations, gave their team the challenge of coming up with the look of the alien in the ice block unearthed by the Norwegians. While it was initially only intended to be shown as a silhouette, the director liked their designs and encouraged them to fully create the creature, which was realised by creating a monster suit that Woodruff wore. The effects team opted to use cable-operated animatronics over more complex hydraulic controls, as they felt they gave a more "organic feel". In order to emulate the creature effects of the first film, Heisserer revealed that traditional practical effects would be used on the creatures whenever possible. However, in post-release interviews, Alec Gillis revealed that while Amalgamated Dynamics creature designs for the film remained intact, most of their practical effects ended up being digitally replaced in post-production by effects house Image Engine.

The prequel also sought to solve two long-standing mysteries from the original film; This film reveals that the Thing cannot replicate inorganic things such as fillings, earrings, clothes, etc. and at a pivotal moment near the end, Kate realizes that Carter's earring is missing as well as the hole for the piercing revealing him to be a Thing. At the end of the 1982 film, the character Childs still has his earring in his right ear. It can be seen just before he takes a drink from the bottle of J&B. Also the character Colin (Jonathan Walker) can be seen with his throat and wrist sliced at the end, which is the exact way the Americans found him in The Thing. A scene was filmed showing how Colin has locked himself in the room behind the door where Carter puts his axe in. He then hears movements from the arm-Things closing in on him. With nowhere left to go, Colin takes his razor, slices his wrist, then sits down and slices his own throat (the scene was deleted for pacing reasons but can be viewed as a bonus feature on the BluRay edition).

[last lines]
Lars: [to Matias] That's not a dog! Start the helicopter now!
[both get into helicopter]
Lars: Get it up now! Come on!

Top:   One of Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr.'s stunning animatronic effects on set;

Above:   Director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.

Originally, a different beginning and ending to the movie had been partially filmed, which would have shed more light on the Thing's backstory. The prologue would have shown how the alien pilot purposely crashed the ship on Earth, and then committed suicide. Later, an alien that was in the process of becoming a Thing would exit the ship in order to kill itself by freezing. At the end, as Kate enters the ship, she finds the interior littered with dead aliens, either dismembered, burnt or in a state of transformation. In the central area, she sees the last alien pilot hanging, with its throat slit. According to van Heijningen Jr., the implication was that the alien race piloting the ship was collecting other alien specimens. One such specimen was a Thing, which had broken out of its confinement pod, leading to a massacre among the aliens and other specimens similar to what happened at the Norwegian base. The Sander-Thing, having taken the form of the pilot, suddenly attacks Kate, but she holds it back by threatening to use a grenade and blow both of them up. Then Carter enters and uses his flamethrower on the Pilot-Thing, to fool Kate into believing that he is human. After early screenings, the studio didn't think the Pilot-Thing was scary enough, and the climax was becoming too complicated, with Kate trying to stop the Sander-Thing as well as discovering the Thing's backstory at the same time. So the backstory was omitted, a new computer-generated Sander-Thing was inserted at the last minute, and a Tetris-like animation was added to the scene where Kate enters the central area to hide the dead alien pilot.

The Thing 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, grossing a domestic total nearly $17 million by the end of its run. The film also received mostly negative reviews from critics, who continued to compare - perhaps unfairly - the prequel to carpenter's original. 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". 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."

Interestingly, The Thing 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.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   36%

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