9.29.2011

NEW THING MOVIE - DUMBING IT DOWN FOR GEN-X / GEN-Y

I was originally excited to see the new version of The Thing, but after seeing the trailer not so much. Once again the Gen-X/Gen-Y suits that now run studios and make the films have less sophisticated tastes and talent and are dumbing-it down. 
What made John Carpenter's The Thing a masterpiece of horror was it's slow pace and sense of remove. You felt the isolation of the people, you felt doom closing in and the unrelenting attack of the alien even if you didn't see it. 
It is the same complaint I have with modern zombie pics - they are smart, fast zombies now whereas the original zombies in George Romero's Night of the Living Dead were slow, dumb zombies and ultimately scarier ... an unrelenting force coming after you that you can outrun in the short-term but which will never stop for any reason is far more frightening ... the scariest thing in the new zombie series on AMC is that half-lady hungrily crawling around. The trailer for the new Thing shows lots of quick-cutting, fast-change special creature CGI effects, a girl (shamelessly going after the female demographic when they don't need to given the classic status of the Carpenter version), yet it supposed to take place in the Norwegian camp earlier in the story referenced at the beginning of Carpenter's film. I hope I'm wrong - the casting and production design of the film look good.

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