Here's THE THING...

Now, I absolutely love Carpenter's The Thing. I'm happy to say that I saw it opening weekend back in 1982 and it stands as one of my favorite theater-going experiences. Not to mention that if you get a bunch of horror geeks in the same room arguing over what the greatest horror film ever made is, The Thing just might win. Well, at least most of the time.

Personally, I rate it as the second greatest horror film in the history of history. And no...The Shining isn't the first.

But it seems that there's a bit of a ruckus over Universal's upcoming prequel (due October 14th). Imagine that. A lot of folks have taken to the message boards to air their personal outrage over the studio's audacity in trying to reinfranchise their original investment.

They're howling that Hollywood needs to quit remaking existing properties and invest in new and creative visions. And I usually agree. I can count off on one hand all the successful remakes of great horror films and still have a middle finger left over to acknowledge the rest. But the last time Universal gave someone the funding to create an exciting new monster mythos was...

...well, damn. John Carpenter and The Thing. Ouch.

The Thing is, the movie originally tanked at the box office...three million opening weekend. Yeah, weird to think that most folks seemed to hate the movie when it came out.

But here's why I'm not disturbed by this move. Universal has been sitting on this property (let's just step back and admit that Universal is a business, first and foremost) for near thirty years.

But over the years, their investment has been re-evaluated by critics and the public and has become one solid property for building a franchise on (now sit back and imagine where solid writers could go with the mythos by The Thing IV).

So it’s kind of reassuring that they’ve held off as long as they have. But here we go...

Rolling into this, they had four options:

1. Remake.
2. Make a sequel.
3. Do a prequel.
4. Throw away more money on another attempt at rebooting The Wolfman.

We won’t talk about the fourth option.

I sort of cringe over the first option, and I’m glad more level-minded folks at Universal felt the same way. Not saying that the studio would have went the Platinum Dunes route (and to Universal's credit they did deliver with the remake of Dawn of the Dead), but Carpenter’s The Thing was lightning in a bottle. Trying to rehash the same material is setting out with failure as the best case scenario.

As for a sequel...seriously, does anyone that loves Carpenter’s movie really want to be told what happened between Mac and Childs? It’s a great ending (although admittedly probably a big reason for its initial failure...that and all the doggy abuse). And a sequel means you have to top everything from the original.

So a prequel is the best option, for the fans and for the studio. It can exist as its own entity while leaving Carpenter and writer Bill Lancaster's vision untouched. Essentially, it’s playing around in the same mythos, but doesn’t touch the iconic characters. And if it’s a success, a franchise can be built that continues on without co-opting the Carpenter/Lancaster narrative.

Call me naive, but I’m trusting Universal on this one (despite The Wolfman, which at least was a noble failure). Their track record hasn’t been all that great lately, but I get the vibe that they’re traditionalists. Which is welcome. I'm pretty sure that they're doing everything they can to avoid alienating the fanbase on this one.

And as someone that cut their horror teeth on the Universal monster movies of the black n’ white era, that means some- thing to at least me. I'm not saying that it's going to be better than Carpenter's version. Because it won't. It won't even be as good.

But at least I get the impression that everyone involved in this project seems to respect the material they're working with. So if it's only half as good as Carpenter's, then it'll be better than most studio horror films. And that right there is something to be excited about.

Sad, I know.

But The Thing is...

...there's still a lot of traditionalists that would argue that Hawks' version of John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" is still the best. Go figure.

DAYBREAKERS (2009)

Welcome to the world of 2019, where the day-to-day has become the night-to-night after a vampire plague has turned most of humanity into vampires. The good news is that oil doesn't seem all that important anymore. The bad news is that human blood is the new oil, with fresh supplies dwindling rapidly. But a dour, chain-smoking Hematologist (Ethan Hawke) is on the game, looking for an alternative for a multinational blood chain. Thing is, he's looking into a cure, and that's not in the interest of the corporation's bottom line. Sociopolitical satire and sporadic action sequences ensue.

Which is all well and fine, but as such Daybreakers falls into the inherent weakness of the vampire genre. Too much time spent with the monster morosely waxing existential. Not much joy de morte. Too much telling, not showing. The moments when Willem Dafoe shows up to chew the scenery infuses a li'l hot blood into the proceedings, but feels like they belong in another picture. Like he wandered in off a D2DVD sequel to John Carpenter's Vampires.

Daybreakers never really settles on exactly what kind of horror film it wants to be. Is it a dark comedy, a bloody actioner or heavy-handed sociopolitical allegory? Even Romero can't pull off the latter anymore, and he's an old hand. And while Tarantino may pull off mash-ups, he's spent an inordinate amount of time getting it down. The brothers Spierigs are pups, and don't have the chops yet to try and tackle such a difficult stunt.

What I enjoyed most about the Brothers Spierig's debut zombie slapstick debut Undead was their obvious exhilaration in making a movie without any money, a roll-up-the-sleeves and bark-the-knuckles in a Aussie "get-er-done" delirium. None of that energy seems to be on display with Daybreakers, as if being handed a real budget has sapped their creative spunk. Or worse, exacerbated the creativity to the point that they try to pack two or three movies worth of ideas into one, without having the discipline (yet) to make it cohesive.

Ultimately I found Daybreakers to be no fun. It was sloppily written, a barely connected series of vignettes rather than a cohesive narrative. Subplots are introduced and left mostly unexplored, or resolved abruptly. What should be left as subtext is made overt through dialogue.

But it's not a horrible entry, and the political cartoon aspect might be fun for budding anarchists. And I do respect that it's more ambitious than most American genre multiplex filler.