The Thing (2011)

Antarctica .. 1982 .. Winter .. (well .. Winter is pretty much all the time around there, even if it's called Summer once in a while). Near a Norwegian exploration station a discovery is made: a structure burred under the ice which looks like an alien shio. Not far away, frozen in a block of is found also .. the pilot (or how the title of the movie says - "The Thing"). Guess what happens next ?

Besides the invariable answer of "obviously, something bad", the biggest spoiler (that's so big that it doesn't make much sense for me to ignore it) is that the movie is not a remake for the 1982 John Carpenter's classic. It's a prequel. Well, that shouldn't tell much to somebody who didn't see the '82 movie. I've seen it long ago and I don't remember much, but still the fact that I've found out this is a prequel made pretty clear how it's gonna end. Well, surprise, it's not exactly like that. Anyway, going back to Carpenter's original, that's considered as one of the best horrors ever made. And you have to admit, that all the above context offers a perfect support for something like this. Imagine "Alien" (since it's not much until a prequel for this one too) set in an isolated research station in Antarctica. Besides that, about the creature, there is also probably the most important element, to quote a tagline from the original: "man is the warmest place to hide". Anyway from this start also the bad parts, to say it so ...

As I mentioned, it's been a while since I've seen the original, but I remember that I liked it. What I don't remember is if it had something that's basically granted by the context, but not to much exploited in the new version compared to the movie length at least. I'm talking about the lack of trust, which might go up to paranoid behavior, between the group members, given that it's not known "who is human and who is not". The movie could be 15 minutes longer, which 15 minutes should be dedicated to something like this. The psychological thrill provided by this context is barely exploited by the movie, maybe besides a scene or two (well, central to the movie, it's right). Besides that, as other points to criticize there are a bunch of scenes that don't add up, smth like (small spoilers below):

- "we must go and search for survivors where the chopper crashed"
- "not possible, that place can't be reached, we need another helicopter to go there"
(later in the evening, the two "survivors" are coming back on their own feet at the basecamp - and, well, "the thing" doesn't have wings if that's supposed somehow to explain)

or ...

- "and now what we're gonna do ?"
- "the closest station is a Russian one, at something like 80 km from here"
(the second day, a helicopter is tailing a dog that runs from the Norwegian base to an American one - or at least that should be the continuity with the movie from '82 even if it's not completely shown .. so .. to understand from this, that the dog ran more than 80 km with a chopper behind it)

And there are others too. To these, negatively speaking, you can add also the quality of the VFX which might be better than the '82 one but still far from the 2011 standards on a movie that has the Universal logo in the beginning. Anyway, long story short, I can't say that I lost my time with it. With all its issues, in the end what I wanted to see was a decent horror, not some Oscar material, and for that it was way better than, let's say .. the remakes from the last years of the initial versions of slasher series like "Friday the 13th" or "Nightmare on the Elm Street".

Rating: 3 out of 5

Pontypool (2008)

YAZM ... Yet Another Zombie Movie :) Well .. sort of ... = I include into "zombie movie" pretty much everything that's horror/SF involving hordes of "infected" people (dead, undead, alive, whatever). "Pontypool" is anyway something different from anything I've seen before ...

First of all I should say that we have here an indie production which apparently found a pretty original way to lower the costs. All the action takes place inside a radio station, more exactly around the transmission room. Well, after all it seems that the movie is based on a book, so probably it was implicit to get to this setting. And to be even more cheap on the budget (just to say so), it's a local radio station, with three on place employees, established somewhere at the basement of a church in a minuscule town from Canada. What we have in the movie is a winter day matinee show, hosted by a guy who is apparently a "former glory" in terms of radio broadcasts, but whose agent doesn't seem to be able to find him a better position somewhere else. So, what starts as an usual broadcast session slowly turns into something less credible than every day's news. From some point on, the news from the diverse sources received on the wire are quite the opposite with the normal daily calm of the small surrounding community. For instance, instead of the usual weather forecast info, the correspondent ends up transmitting news about the "flow" of violent people devastating the local doctor's office. Or, in the section "live from studio", some of the members of the familial choir invited to preview the oncoming local musical adaptation of "Lawrence of Arabia" start having unusual behavior (well, more unusual that the one implied by the musical). And so on, what was initially looking as a hoax targeted to the show host, starts getting proportions ...

I can say that up to its first half the movie has an impeccable script, very clever and witty (just observe the repetitions ...), and which keeps you stuck to the screen. After this, the whole "ivasion" of "zombies" (I suppose that the main idea is obvious already) starts to be treated in a way somewhere between surreal and ... stupid. I'm not gonna disclose now what's the "virus" in this movie's version ... but I really doubt that the same idea was ever used in another one. The same for "the cure" (they're related after all). I tried to consider more the originality for this part but I can say that it might become a bit to hard to be believed from some point on, even if you keep in mind it's a movie. Probably that's why you get actually the "surreal" part integrated = in the context of the possible infection combined with the stress, the characters get to some dialogues/behavior which are a bit out of the surrounding context.

The main role is played by Stephen McHattie, probably a guy a bit less known (he's Canadian), but who I was expecting from some time to see as leading actor. And it deserved the wait. I think it's actually one of the main reasons to see the movie. Generally the cast is quite well chosen. Besides that we have the cinematography part which for me was extraordinary. I can't imagine how much further than that you can go in the conditions of the action placed in the same room pretty much of the movie. And the last cherry on top, the sound ... not the score, but effectively "the sound" - effects, editing, mixing. Well, the context of the movie = radio station (& more to see ...) pretty much demands it, but I can't appreciate the quality of what my ears have heard. For all of these, even if the last part of the movie was a bit disappointing, and draws it down pretty much ( I estimate that 3 of 4 viewers to have a final reaction of something like .. "that was stupid ..."), still ...

Rating: 4 out of 5