Like the other big extraterrestrial parasitical horror of the late 70s/early 80s The Thing is currently undoing the prequel treatment and a little Production Weekly bird tweeted this morning to tell us that Universal’s movie will begin shooting in March in Toronto.
John Carpenter’s gruesome and genuinely horrific film not only stands up today as an example of intense and sustained horror but also it benefits from the wonderful and creepy effects work by Stan Winston. Under a more recent sun and with a different director predisposed to using CG for the creature work this film would lose much of its effect, so the idea of a remake is tainted with an air of caution at how the new movie will differentiate itself from the original.
Let’s hope the shine of Ronald D. Moore’s successful BSG reimagining rubs off on his treatment of the mythology of this franchise, and while I’m very, very pleased this is not a sequel (as the ending of the Carpenter film is one of the most haunting for a reason), like the Alien prequel I’m a little sceptical that staring into the face of this particular madness again may dull the horror of what scared us in the first place.
