Welcome to the Kill Count where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies.
I'm James A. Janisse and today we're looking at the 2011 prequel to The Thing - also called The Thing.
Don't know why they use the same title, but yeah.
It tells the story of the research team at the Norwegian base found decimated by Kurt Russell & Co in the 1982 John Carpenter film,
how they came across the alien thing, how it infiltrated their crew,
and how it led to that real handsome dog-wolf running across the Antarctic expanse in the original.
And I know the 1982 movie is a remake of the 50s movie, but I'll be calling it the original for simplicity's sake.
Carpenter's version is also my favorite horror movie, so I was real curious to see what this prequel had in store.
The good thing is that it painstakingly adheres to continuity with the original,
showing exactly how everything wound up the way it was when Outpost 31's crew found it .
The bad thing is the CG, especially since one of the most impressive things about the original was
the incredible practical effects.
But practical or CG, at least this movie's still got a fair number of kills. Let's find out how many and get to them.
The movie begins with sweeping shots of the Antarctic landscape, and just like that
I'm excited as hell because this place is such a good setting for a horror movie.
It's 1982 and a trio of Norwegians are taking a snowcat to locate the source of a mysterious signal they've detected.
In the back is Olav, handling all the radio equipment,
and up front is Peder, the second-in-command at the Norwegian Thule Station,
and Lars who's driving the snowcat and who we later find out is the only one, who doesn't speak or understand any English.
They stop the snowcat when they're right on top of the signal
and then the ground opens up below them and sends them crashing down a CGI crevasse.
They wind up in a pretty tight spot and turned their lights on to reveal a spaceship and a title card!
"THE THING"
Again, why the hell does it have the same name, man?
We briefly leave Antarctica for a Jurassic Park-type scene with a paleontologist being recruited for a special mission.
The paleontologist is Kate Lloyd, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead
and the John Hammond to her Alan Grant is Dr. Sander Halvorson.
He tells her a Norwegian team has found a structure and a specimen buried in Antarctica.
That's enough to get her to sign up for the mission, even though she's unable to get any more info out of Halvorson
or his research assistant, Adam Finch, played by Eric Christian Olsen from Not Another Teen Movie.
We're still in that "let's introduce a fuck-ton of characters" phase right now, so bear with me, folks!
Kate, Halvorsen and Adam are flown into Antarctica by an American helicopter crew,
consisting of the sleepy, snoring Griggs, the pilot Derek, played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje,
and the ringleader of the crew, Carter, played by Joel Edgerton, whose career has been shining real bright lately.
Carter is kind of our substitute Mac in this movie, which I guess makes him a whopper?
Eh?
They land at Thule Station, and immediately board a snowcat that takes them to the excavation site,
where they meet Edvard, commander at Thule Station and an old friend of Dr. Halvorson.
He introduces a couple more characters - Karl and Juliette, two geologists.
But I've got to admit that the characters in this movie don't stand out to me nearly as much as the cast of the original.
The spaceship looks alright though, as Edvard shows it to the dumbfounded newcomers.
Pssh, you all think that's impressive, get a load of what they found outside encased in ice.
A freaking alien!
It's perfectly preserved in there, so Halverson immediately wants to dig it out and play with it.
As night falls they head back to Thule Station to talk to the others there about the best way to bring back their mint-condition Thing.
We meet more of the crew, like Jonas, played by notorious bear-fucker Kristofer Hivju.
Har.
The scene is mostly just handshaking and plan making.
But we do see that the most important thing to Halvorson is keeping this discovery all to himself.
"Make sure that everyone stays off the radio. We don't want any information out."
The next morning, the excavation is complete.
Lars and his dog riding atop the giant ice block, as they tow it into the base.
They put it right where we find it in the original, but this baby's still a block right now, not a cozy ice tub.
Adam and Jonas reflect upon the discovery of alien life.
"I never believed in this shit."
"I always did."
But Halvorson is just eager to get to play time, saying he wants to take a tissue sample.
He and Edvard are taken aback when Kate questions the wisdom of doing so, bringing up issues of sterilization and whatnot.
So Halverson takes her to the back and reprimands her for speaking up with thoughts of her own.
"In the future, don't contradict me in front of those people again"
His superiority established, they drill into the ice and put the tissue sample in a petri dish.
One giant leap for science kind!
Which of course means it's a good time to get drunk.
Everyone celebrates the discovery, not knowing that in the other room the ice containing their alien specimen is melting.
Halvorson tries to give a long-winded and poetic speech,
but the crew is much more receptive to Peder's more straightforward proclamation,
And breaks out into a fun little Norwegian folk song.
After stopping to go the little echoes room, Derek checks in on the big old ice block and sees that's more of a slush cube.
As he leaves the alien breaks free, busting out of the block and flying through the ceiling.
Derek runs back and tells everyone the alien broke out, so they all gather around the newly created ice tub for one last group shop before these characters start to die.
They break up into groups to search the entire camp and in the kennel they find that Lars' dog has been killed.
Wouldn't be a Thing movie without a dead dog, right?
But even worse is what another pair finds underneath one the buildings.
It's a nasty looking Thing and it's assimilating that dog!
Before you know it, the Thing shoots out a tentacle straight through this dude Henrik's back.
Which becomes like a grappling hook and pulls him back.
And this is what I mean by the characters being less memorable.
Henrik was so unremarkable, I didn't even introduce him to you before just now!
Seems like he was just there to add another body to the Kill Count.
The others gather round while Henrik gets nommed on, and when gunfire doesn't do anything to stop the Thing Derek yells for them to burn it,
which they quickly do despite Dr. Halvorson's protests.
The Thing's crab claws try to Mike Tyson punch out of the burning building, but it's too late and it burns to death.
Aww, lost your toy, Halvorson?
Sorry.
Halvorson really stresses the importance of... science(?) when he asked the others if he can examine the remains.
But everyone else is pretty against messing with Thing stuff anymore.
"I think we should destroy it. Completely"
But Halvorson uses the friendship card and sways Edvard, who tells his men to bring the charred corpse inside.
What follows is an autopsy scene quite similar to the one in John Carpenter's film.
And it's one of a few times in this movie where it's difficult to say whether it's an homage to or a copy of the original.
But hey, at least this scene uses practical effects!
Enjoy it while you can 'cause we 'bout to be getting computer-generated real soon.
They find Henrik's body encased in a sack.
And Kate notes that it be looking pretty fresh.
"The tissue... it looks almost new"
Looks like the Thing was absorbing Henrik.
Pretty gross, but I bet Halvorson finds it fascinating.
"It is fascinating"
I mean, yeah. You ain't wrong.
Separate from that fresh fascinating body they find a titanium plate.
Karl confirms Henrik had one in his arm from a previous injury.
But Kate brings up a good question, and asked why the plate is outside of his body now.
She takes a tissue sample to examine and we trade in the original's cheap 80's computer graphics for mid-grade 2010 CG computer graphics
as Kate and Adam discovered that the alien cells are attacking and transforming into human cells.
"They're imitating his cells."
Dun dun dun!
Now we're forty minutes into the movie, and these characters are just discovering what we've known this whole time.
And I honestly can't decide whether to commend the movie's patience, or get frustrated by the slowness of it.
In any case, things pick up the next morning when a very sick Olav leaves with the American Chopper team to go get some medical help.
In the bathroom Kate discovers two important things.
First some bloody dental fillings on the ground and then a shower full of blood.
Knowing someone has been Thing-ified, she runs outside and flags down Carter, to stop anyone from leaving the base.
But as Carter begins to drop that bird, Olav starts shaking.
But turns out that's just a red herring, 'cause Griggs is the Thing!
And holy shit, that CG looks real bad man, oof.
Oh no. Shit! Thing no!
He stands up and Twizzlers come out of his chest, right into Olav which kills him off-screen.
Oh, man, that does not look good. What a letdown!
Sorry you couldn't have been killed by OG Thing, Olav!
Kate and Edvard watch as the helicopter spins out of control and crashes behind a mountain range.
They can't go out to look for them, because their only other chopper's refueling at another base.
And it turns out the radio's dead too!
Wait, who's this guy? What, another nothing character? Yeah, his name's Colin. He's English.
"Radio's dead. It's fucking dead."
Kate goes back to the water closet and finds a freshly-cleaned shower stall.
Meaning a Thing-person must still be at the base.
Edvard finally tells Halvorson to go fuck himself, so they can bring in outside help,
but Kate tells them nobody should leave, which pisses off Edvard.
"I make decisions about this camp."
"I know, Edvard."
Yeah, she knows Edvard.
She tells everyone there the other things she knows too.
The replicating cells, the dental filling she found on the ground, and the case of the mysterious, bloody shower.
But Edvard ignores her anyway and takes Colin and Lars to leave.
Ugh, I wish these people acted as rationally as the characters in the original.
Juliette offers to help Kate by showing her the keys to the bases vehicles,
but when Kate is looking through a drawer for them, Juliette begins to transform right behind her.
We can put Juliette on the list, since she's a confirmed Thing.
And while their transformation is mostly CGI, it doesn't look all that bad.
I can get down with this one.
It's way better than Griggs, and his face cracking open.
Kate runs away and the langelier-looking Thing chases after her, running straight into Karl and impaling him through the chest with one of its claws.
Sorry Karl, but hey, at least he had a few lines before he died.
Peder dons a flamethrower and Kate opens the door so they can watch - for a little bit - Juliette-Thing feed on Karl... in a strangely erotic way.
Peder torches the Thing and despite it attempting to put itself out in the kitchen
He perseveres and successfully puts it down with the flames
They toss the bodies in a pile and burn them all up, and Kate gives a speech pretty much exactly like Mac's from the original.
"It could be any of us."
Oh well, maybe that's it for things it takes from the original.
"So we take blood samples from everybody and we test each one of them."
Come on!
They determine no one should leave the base, since someone could be a Thing just like Juliette was.
So Lars and the Real Girl disable all the vehicles, and he also shows her a secret stash of grenades. Handy.
On their way inside, they spot a couple of figures limping towards the camp.
Turns out that Derek and Carter survived the helicopter crash, which Peder finds unbelievable for any human being.
So he wants to burn them without a trial.
Kate convinces him to instead quarantine them while the science shit gets underway.
But oh no! Looks like there's a fire and all the science shit is burning up!
It's an obvious case of arson, so you know what that means. Saboteur!
Colin tries to get himself more screen time by accusing Adam of being the guilty party.
But before a full fight breaks out Kate interrupts them.
"There might be another way"
So yeah, they don't actually do another blood test, thank fuck.
Since all this copying from the original was making this movie feel like "The Thing Awakens".
Their alternative to the blood test is to check for fillings.
Metal in your mouth means you ain't no Thing, since Things can't replicate inorganic material
Judging by that titanium rod found outside of Henrik and the dental fillings found on the bathroom floor.
The interesting thing about this blood test alternative is that it can provide false positive, as Adam points out.
"I'm gonna get killed because I floss."
At the end of the test only Peder, Jonas, Kate, and Lars are for sure human.
The potential things are Halvorson, Edvard, Adam and Colin.
Kate tells Jonas and Lars to go get the Americans so they can test them too.
But when they get there, they find the Americans missing, having escaped captivity through the floor.
Lars runs off to find them, but gets pulled Into a building as Jonas watches.
Edvard and Halvorson are upset about the recent shift in power,
so they try to convince Peder, armed with a flamethrower, that the threat is the Americans outside, not his Norwegian bros inside.
Jonas arrives with the news that the Americans escaped and took Lars.
But all the screaming and shouting is put on pause when they hear a window break.
It was the Americans breaking in, and Carter sporting a flamethrower of his own.
When Edvard goes "Mad King" and tells Peder to burn them all, Derek whips out Lars' gun and shoots Peder right through the head in self-defence.
Huh, that seems really familiar. Where have I seen that before?
Oh yeah!
The bullet also pierced Peder's flamethrower, so that whole thing blows up and tosses Edvard across the room, knocking him unconscious.
Carter and Derek take control of the situation and have Jonas and Colin help Edvard into the rec room.
But while they're carrying him his hand slips out of his shirt and becomes a Thing arm!
It slips a few fingers down Jonas' throat, as Edvard sprouts a tentacle that whips around the room.
It eventually impels Adam through the chest and as he screams for help, the others take shelter behind a pool table.
Derek tries to shoot the Thing to death, but also gets impaled through the chest.
There's a lot going on here but I always like to help the deaths in order and technically the first one for me is Adam.
Edward Thing-ifies further into a Doom 3 monster, then climbs on top of Adam.
The Edvard head snuggles up next to Adam's and the two begin to merge
Ending Adam's life as they become the two-headed Thing found in the original.
That Thing - sometimes known as Split-face - crawls away and the next to go on the count is Jonas
Who's been getting face-fucked by that thing arm this whole time
Ha, a detachable hand running around on its own?
Kind of like the one from The Addams Family! What was its name?
Oh, I forget.
Anyway, Kate torches both of them and that's that.
Finally, Derek succumbs to his chest wound as Carter tends to him, giving us yet another kill from the scene to add on the list.
Carter leaves the room and leaves Kate to flame on.
The two of them team up to go Thing hunting and during their search, the movie decides that it's done pretending Colin is a real character
And we see him alive for the last time, hiding in a radio room.
Dr. Halvorson is also hiding, but since he is a real character, he's not forgotten so quickly.
The Thing tracks him down and charges after him, killing him just offscreen on the ground.
Always a bummer when you don't see the villainous character killed more explicitly.
After hearing Halvorson's screams, Kate and Carter are attacked by more Thing arms
But they stop them using a fire axe and Kate's trusty flamethrower.
Carter's axe is right where Mac and Copper would find it in the original.
So Kate's all like:
"Don't. Don't touch it."
We need to leave it for continuity.
They look around some more, before Split-face jumps out and attacks Carter.
Carter runs away and hides in the kitchen for another scene that makes me think of Jurassic Park.
Not sure which I'd rather fight - a Thing or a velociraptor.
When the thing finds Carter, it howls at him and charges him, but Kate appears just in time to light it ablaze.
It crashes through the wall in a shot referencing both the Carpenter movie and the fifties version and lands outside
Kate follows through and torches it further finally putting an end to it in the same place Mac and Copper would find it later.
They see a snowcat take off, and driving it is Halvorson, who they correctly assume is a Thing.
They somehow fix one of the other snowcats and start her up to give chase.
Kate bringing along one of those grenades that Lars had shown earlier.
Hey, speaking of him:
"What happened to Lars?"
"We didn't kill him."
Oh okay. Uh, any other info or no? Okay, cool.
Kate also looks at Carter carefully and like something she sees.
I'll give you a hint; it's the earring in his ear.
They follow Halvorson-Thing to the buried spaceship, which starts up as they're walking on top of it.
A bunch of vents start opening, eventually catching up to Kate who slides down one
and is separated from Carter who remains topside.
She wakes up inside the ship and finds a bunch of whirly thingamajigs, then goes deeper into the ship to find a dumbest looking part of this movie:
this big old pillar o' pixels.
No, seriously look at this thing.
It's like they designed some kind of power supply for the ship, but the effects didn't render properly.
While Kate is marvelling at just how stupid this thing looks, Halvorson-Thing appears behind her and is like:
"How about more stupid-looking things?"
You know what movie? We're good, really. We don't need-
Okay, sure! Thanks!
I mean, anything you can do about that awful looking face?
Okay! Toothy vagina it is!
While the vagina dentata Thing chases Kate, I'm left wondering two things.
First, is this the Thing's true form? And, second, why show the Thing's true form?
It drags her out of hiding and is ready to kill her, but she throws a grenade right into its mouth.
Carter shows up, just in time to watch the firework show.
I - of course - don't count Things on the Kill Count, so we can just enjoy this death without any kill graphics.
The explosion winds up being destructive enough to shut down the ship, which is great news for Carter and Kate
'Cause man, they must be tired.
Carter says there's a Russian station fifty miles away and that they have just enough gas to get there.
But as they're getting ready to leave, Kate pauses at something she sees.
She takes the flamethrower and points it at Carter and tells him how she's been making sure he's a human this whole time.
"Your earring. It was your other ear."
Ho-ho! Carter-Thing, you done fucked up!
He tries to talk his Thing way out of it, but she won't back down.
She lets loose with the flamethrower, and the pretty cool slow-motion torching is accompanied by dinosaur-sounding Thing noises,
confirming to Kate and the audience that she was right.
Sorry, Carter-Thing! So close!
Kate climbs into the other snowcat and stares out the window as the screen fades to black, her fate left ambiguous.
Intercut with the credits is a nice little segment that changes the movie from "The Thing Awakens" into "Rogue One: A Thing Story".
The other helicopter returns to Thule station from its refuelling mission.
And pilot Mattias gets out to find things not quite as he left them.
He shouts for help but nobody's around and we see inside that Colin has committed suicide, by slitting his throat and his wrists with a straight razor,
his blood freezing over into the same strands Mac and Copper will find very shortly
Lars emerges with the gun and checks Mattias' mouth
And although he finds him clear, they watch as a familiar dog Thing bolts out of the station and takes off across the snow
The two of them hop back into the helicopter and chase after it
Lars leaning out the side of the chopper to shoot at it.
Interesting cliffhanger, I wonder if they'll ever make a sequel?
In the meantime, let's count up our dead and get to The Numbers.
13 people died in the Thing prequel; one more than in the original.
The gender breakdown was 12 dudes and one lady, a skosh more diversity than the original's all-dude vic' list.
At a runtime of 102 minutes that comes out to a kill on average every 7.85 minutes.
I'll give the Golden Chainsaw for coolest kill to Juliette.
Her background transformation is a cool moment in the film and although it's obviously CG, It doesn't look downright awful.
Dull Machete for lamest kill will go to Derek who just got tentacle-stabbed and died from blood loss.
Could have done more with that one, Thing.
And that's it!
The Thing prequel came out in 2011 and remains the only feature film its director ever made.
One day I'll make a video comparing the Thing movies, but for now I've got a comment response video for you on Monday,
And on Friday the next Kill Count It (2017).
Until then I'm James A. Janisse. This has been the Kill Count.
Thanks a lot for watching my Kill Count on the 2011 Thing prequel.
I wanna thank some of my patrons like Linden Hause, Zack Geller and Austin Faircloth.
I'm so excited for 2018, even if I started the year with a nasty cold.
Wonder if I got it from the 10-hour all-night editing jam sesh I did for Killer Klowns?
As you can see we got a new screen going on here.
From now on I'll be linking to the previous episode as well as both of the next two videos.
All right. I'm gonna go watch It again.