We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Horrific threats from above and from within.
THE THING (2011)
There are several movies that have been remade that I never would have put up for the remake treatment because the original was so unique and perfect that I feel a remake could never have any hope of living up to it. One of those movies is George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead - which was remade in 2004, with Marc Abraham and Eric Newman producing. So since Abraham and Newman had already messed around with a "sacred" horror film (with the Dawn of the Dead remake turning out to be an entertaining zombie movie, but nowhere close to being on the level of the original Dawn), it's kind of surprising that they felt John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing, which was itself a remake (of The Thing from Another World), was a movie that couldn't be remade. There's conflicting information on whether the producers presented the idea of revisiting The Thing to Universal or if Universal approached them about doing it after the success of Dawn of the Dead, but either way they had decided from the start that they were not going to try to re-do what Carpenter had done. Instead, their version of The Thing was going to be a prequel showing the events that occurred before the titular alien creature reached the American outpost in Antarctica where Carpenter's film had been set. The characters from Carpenter's film were able to figure out that the alien and spacecraft that brought it to Earth had been discovered in the icy ground by a group of researchers at a Norwegian outpost, but by the time they got to the outpost the place had been destroyed and everyone was dead or gone.
Directed by first-time feature director Matthijs van Heijningen from a screenplay by Eric Heisserer (Ronald D. Moore and Scott Frank also worked on the script at different times), 2011's The Thing is set in 1982 and begins with a group of Norwegians driving a snowcat vehicle across snowbound Antarctica, searching for the source of some kind of distress signal they've been picking up. After one of them tells an awful joke that was shocking to hear in a major studio film, they discover that the source is a spacecraft that has been buried deep below the snow and ice since crash-landing there about 100,000 years ago. Outside the craft there's also an alien creature encased in ice.
Scientists are called in to excavate and study these findings, among them American paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who is our lead character because of course Universal wasn't going to make a movie where the primary spoken language is Norwegian. The presence of Kate instantly sets this film apart from Carpenter's, because there were no female characters at the outpost in Carpenter's movie. Here there are two. In addition to Kaete, there's also French geologist Juliette, played by Kim Bubbs. In total, there are sixteen people set up at the outpost, from several different countries: America, Norway, France, Denmark. Only one of the characters doesn't speak English.
We didn't know the characters before, but Carpenter's movie already told us exactly what's going to happen to them. They remove the alien from the ground, it thaws out and revives, and proceeds to wipe these people out, assimilating them and turning itself into perfect copies of them. We know it's not going to go well for them. So while it was good move that the producers didn't just want to remake The Thing '82, making this movie was still sort of a fool's errand because we already know how it's going to turn out, and on the way to getting to the ending we have foreknowledge of, we actually are just seeing a lesser version of the Carpenter film play out. Although the film makes an effort to live up to the other one, the creature attacks aren't nearly as good as the ones we saw in the older movie, and it's not able to achieve the level of dread and paranoia the other movie had.
The Thing 2011's greatest downfall is the fact that the practical effects that were used on set were covered up by some atrocious CGI in post-production. How can you make a companion piece to one of the greatest practical effects horror movies ever and fill it with garbage computer effects? The same thing happened when An American Werewolf in London was followed by An American Werewolf in Paris, and it's baffling.
This movie isn't bad, but it is easy to shrug off its existence because it doesn't really bring anything worthwhile to the table.
WOLF (1994)
I'm not sure if I've watched director Mike Nichols' werewolf movie Wolf at any point since December 2000, but the viewing I had at that time was certainly the most memorable viewing of the movie I have ever had. It wasn't my first time watching it, I had seen it at least once before, but it was airing on one of the movie channels and I decided to put it on. For some reason, two of the dogs my family had then had decided that they no longer wanted anything to do with each other, and in the midst of this Wolf viewing I had to break up a serious fight between the two of them. I ended up getting some bites on my fingers in the process - so there I was watching a movie about Jack Nicholson gradually transforming into a werewolf after being bitten by a wolf, and then I was sporting some dog bites that would soon be infected. That's the kind of werewolf movie viewing that really sticks with you.
Wolf began as an idea crafted by Legends of the Fall author Jim Harrison, and it's a project that he and Nicholson had been wanting to make for a decade by the time it went into production. It's cool to know that a werewolf movie was a passion project for Nicholson. Unfortunately for Harrison, his vision for the film didn't entirely mesh with the director's, so Nichols brought Wesley Strick in to do a rewrite of the script. Harrison wasn't pleased with the outcome, feeling that his wolf had been turned into a chihuahua - and the finished film didn't go over especially well with critics, either. Wolf doesn't seem to be especially popular with horror fans, but the fact that it has Jack Nicholson turning into a werewolf does make it irresistible to some degree.
Nicholson's character Will Randall works at a publishing house, and a whole lot of the movie is focused on his job. After being bitten by a wolf on a snowy road in Vermont one dark night, he starts to develop heightened senses and increased aggression, and he primarily uses these to fight for his job, as he's in danger of losing it to James Spader - dripping sleaze, as usual - as his protégé Stewart Swinton, who not only wants to steal his career but has also been sleeping with his wife Charlotte (Kate Nelligan). Done with his wife as soon as he discovers her infidelity, Will starts pursuing a relationship with Laura Alden (Michelle Pfeiffer), the daughter of his new boss Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer).
Yes, this movie has a hell of a cast. You've also got Richard Jenkins as a detective, Ron Rifkin as a doctor, and David Hyde Pierce as a publishing house employee, with David Schwimmer and Allison Janney making quick, pre-fame appearances. Om Puri got to sport old age makeup as a specialist on the "demon wolf" curse, and Halloween 6 fans will recognize Bradford English when he shows up, one year before getting killed on screen by Michael Myers.
The full werewolf transformation doesn't happen until deep into the film's excessive 125 minute running time. The makeup effects were done by Rick Baker, the legend who brought us the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London, but the werewolves in this film aren't quite on that level. When you have Nicholson playing this monster, you don't want to cover him up too much. I used the plural werewolves because this all builds up to a battle between the Nicholson-wolf and another werewolf. James Spader's character Stewart, who transforms because Will bit him on the hand when he found Charlotte in his apartment.
Wolf isn't the most eventful werewolf movie out there, but it has a werewolf Jack Nicholson fighting a werewolf James Spader, and I have to revisit it from time to time because of that.
A QUIET PLACE PART II (2021)
It's the day after the ending of A Quiet Place, and life goes on for the remaining members of the Abbott family - Emily Blunt as Evelyn, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe as her teen children Regan and Marcus, and newborn baby Beau. They leave their farm behind and venture out across the post-apocalyptic countryside populated by alien creatures that can't see, but will devour anything that makes a sound. Once they're away from the location they have been hiding out in for over a year, it doesn't take long for them to cross paths with someone they knew before the aliens arrived, Cillian Murphy as Emmett... and to hear a radio broadcast they couldn't pick up at their place, a broadcast of "Beyond the Sea" that Emmett says has been playing nonstop for months.
Deducing that the radio station is broadcasting from an island a short distance away, Regan sets out on her own in hopes of finding and helping fellow survivors. It's a journey that would be dangerous even if Regan weren't deaf, that just adds to it - but it's also her protection, because the Abbotts have discovered that the seemingly unkillable aliens are vulnerable when reacting in pain to the sound of feedback from Regan's hearing aid. So her plan is to broadcast that feedback over the radio and really mess with the aliens. After Evelyn finds out what Regan is up to, she sends Emmett after her daughter while she stays at his hideout with the baby and a wounded Marcus.
There's not a whole lot to A Quiet Place Part II, but if you were left wanting to spend more time in the world director John Krasinski and screenwriters Bryan Woods and Scott Beck established in the first film, this movie allows you to do that. Blunt, Simmonds, and Jupe continue to do great work in their roles, and Krasinski (who returned to direct and wrote this one solo) made sure to pack the film with action and supense. Its 97 minute running time almost feels like it's just one suspense sequence after another. Murphy also turns Emmett into a welcome addition, playing the character quite well, showing that he has given up hope and feels that other survivors are beyond saving.
Emmett would be right if all survivors were like one group we see in the film, who are way too reminiscent of the sort of scumbag survivors we see all the time on The Walking Dead. But later Djimon Hounsou shows up as a survivor who is more pleasant.
This sequel has some great alien attack set pieces throughout, but the best of the bunch is right up front. The film opens with a flashback to the day the aliens arrived on Earth, allowing Krasinski to briefly reprise the role of late Abbott patriarch Lee and showing off why A Quiet Place Part II ended up costing around $60 million when the first movie only cost $17 million. He also shows through the whole movie that he's a hell of a filmmaker, but that opening sequence is a major calling card. I think we're going to have a lot of spectacular movies from John Krasinski to look forward to in the future.
FALSE POSITIVE (2021)
Best known for her curly hair and comedic performances, Ilana Glazer has straightened her hair and gotten serious for director John Lee's psychological horror film False Positive. Unfortunately, Glazer and Lee - a comedy regular himself, and co-creator of Wonder Showzen - were so dedicated to making sure that she plays her role completely straight, they failed to give her character much of a personality. It's surprising to see that Glazer is capable of playing someone who is so bland, and it's even more surprising that the character is so uninteresting given that Glazer also wrote the screenplay with Lee (working from a story Lee conceived with author Alissa Nutting). She helped build this character from the ground up, but there's nothing to her aside from concerns about pregnancy and work.
The character is Lucy Martin, who has been unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant for two years by the time the film begins. With nature not taking its course, Lucy and her surgeon husband Adrian (Justin Theroux) decide to seek help from Adrian's mentor Doctor John Hindle (Pierce Brosnan), who now runs the Hindle Women's Center. Hindle has invented his own fertility treatment that he describes as being a "little bit of both" intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization - and whatever it is, it's quite effective, because Lucy quickly finds herself pregnant with triplets. She is then presented with a sad choice: to reduce the risk of complications, it's suggested that they do a "selective reduction" procedure and abort either the boy fetuses that share an amniotic sac, or the "female singlet". It's around the time when she has to make this decision that Lucy's mental state begins to crumble, and it's all downhill from there.
False Positive has been described as a "modern Rosemary's Baby", and that is very clearly what the movie wants to be. As Lucy's pregnancy goes on, she becomes increasingly paranoid that Adrian and Hindle have some sort of secret, sinister agenda regarding her offspring... but there's no hint at what they might be up to. The paranoia in Rosemary's Baby was driven by talk of Satanism and witchcraft, of infant sacrifice. There was something to fear there. In this movie, it's not clear what we should be concerned about. Since we see things from Lucy's perspective, Adrian and Hindle certainly do come off as being shady, but why? What could they be doing? Lucy doesn't even present a theory, she's just worried and suspicious.
As we try to ascertain whether the men in Lucy's life are working against her, if she's suffering from prepartum depression, or if all these concerns can be chalked up to a condition jokingly referred to throughout the movie as "mommy brain", False Positive does achieve a very dark tone. Although Lee and Glazer have indicated that they feel there is some humor to the film, that didn't really come through in any substantial way during my viewing. It takes Lucy's situation very seriously, and given that it deals with potential pregnancy complications it is an uncomfortable movie to sit through at times. But it's also not a particularly interesting movie, because we have no clear reason to be afraid of Adrian or Hindle.
The movie is really just 90 minutes of watching Lucy worry, and eventually it gets difficult to sit through not just because of the heavy subject matter, but also because none of the characters are likeable and it starts to feel like there's no point in watching them go through all of this. For me, False Positive became a slog and wore out its welcome long before the end credits started to roll. What's going on with Adrian and Hindle? Is Lucy's career going to continue going well? I didn't care.
False Positive has a good cast, and Glazer handles the dramatic role well. In addition to the actors already mentioned there are also notable appearances by Zainab Jah, Sophia Bush, Josh Hamilton, and Gretchen Mol (who makes Hindle's nurse Dawn the creepiest person in the movie), but the story didn't sustain the running time as far as I was concerned, and overall I found the movie to be off-putting. Its effectiveness depends on the viewers managing to be invested in Lucy's story and getting wrapped up in her paranoia, and I couldn't. It didn't work for me.
The review of False Positive originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
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