Melancholia (2011)

Today we are taking a look at a movie that I'm sure would never make it onto your school's mental health wellness study week. Oh who am I kidding? Your school doesn't do that shit anyway and lets mental health fall to the wayside in favor of more standardized testing, so I guess it's moot. 

Director: Lars von Trier

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

Melancholia is one of the more recent films by Lars von Trier, who is famous for making provocative, artistic films. Now, given the fact that this is a very abstract, strange movie, I don't think it would be right to review this in the same way I would review Species 2 or something. In fact I debated whether to review this at all...but then I went nah, it's cool, I can do this. I did preparations Rocky-style by running up and down a flight of stairs this afternoon.

If you don't know, this is the movie starring Kirsten Dunst about a bride going through depression and also the world is ending. I listed those two plot points in that order because I understand priorities!

We start off with a slow-moving apocalypse scene with the world going to hell and a woman played by Kirsten Dunst and her family running around on a golf course with horses. It's very interesting and evocative imagery, only the problem is that von Trier played it so slow that I thought my computer was lagging – which kind of lessened the effect when I had to check my Internet speed instead of getting sucked into the atmosphere. I mean, that shit does happen all the time on Netflix when you're like me and have a computer you bought for $300 at Office Max.

The aftermath to Evil Dead?

But never fear, for then we get a scene of Dunst at her wedding day with her husband Michael. They're trying to do a three-point turn in a limousine and get to, you know, the wedding party itself. The driver can't hack it, so Michael gets in the seat and tries. Then he can't do it, so Dunst has to try. At what point do you just give up and rent a Subaru instead? So far this is probably the worst wedding I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot.

I sure hope they didn't pay that driver too much for having to get him out of the limo and do it themselves...

They finally get to her sister's humongous mansion, complete with a giant-ass golf course that nobody seems to use, and Dunst pauses the whole thing to go say hello to her real lover... 

Ohhhhhh yeah.

Inside at the party, we see that things aren't quite as idyllic as they appeared – including a whole table of women named Betty and a mother played by Charlotte Rampling that constantly stresses how much she doesn't like weddings, and for some reason came anyway. Also, the sister played by Charlotte Gainesbourge constantly has a scowl on her face at the wedding and constantly says she hates Dunst's character Justine over and over. The whole mood is very uncomfortable and goes on for a long time. So, like a real wedding, then. 

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll have 17,000 more glasses of wine. Clearly I haven't had enough yet."

The best wedding gift is soul-crushing depression to the point where you can't get out of bed.

The problem is just that we don't really get much of a story here. Yeah, the mood is tangible, and very well done for a little while, but it drags on for over an hour and there isn't much to really latch onto after a while. We get scraps of this story about how depressed Justine is and how she's had problems in the past, and you think, oh, it'll be revealed more later. Only it isn't. It's like a date with a person who speaks a different language, and you think, oh, we'll connect more when we spend more time together. It can't be that hard. But then you just end up at home alone anyway and more confused.

And don't get me wrong here – I'm not one of those assholes who just thinks all film has to be straightforward and anything that isn't an explosion-filled action fest just sucks by default. No, I didn't go into this expecting a Michael Bay action fest – thank you IMDb commenters. In fact that whole argument is just kinda bullshit to begin with; just because someone doesn't like something doesn't mean they were expecting some ridiculous polar opposite that you made up just to be condescending. Same shit in the other direction, too - “oh, you didn't like Transformers 5: Return of the Giant Phallic CGI Effects? YOU MUST HAVE JUST BEEN EXPECTING KING LEAR!!!”

No.

Even so though, Melancholia just tends to drag on too long without enough real character or drama, so much as just the ghostly suggestions of those things. Instead of actual conflict, we get the implication of it, sort of tantalizingly waved in front of the audience's face like a slab of wet meat in front of a salivating dog. The atmosphere is still there, but where I wanted to hear some good, soul-searching dialogue that explored what was going on between them, I just got this: 

CLAIRE: It's not about the cost. It's just, I thought you really wanted this.

JUSTINE: But I do.

CLAIRE: Michael has tried to get through to you all evening, with no avail.

JUSTINE: That's not true. I smile, and I smile, and I smile.

CLAIRE: You lied to all of us.

Then Claire leaves, that's basically the end of that, and Justine goes and talks to Charlotte Rampling, because I really needed more scenes of Rampling telling her not to get married and that nobody wants to be here, so it's good the movie's got my back. I can see what von Trier wanted to do with these scenes, showing the futility of it all, but again - it's just bits and scraps of a real story; you don't actually get very much.

Oh, except for close-ups so invasive that you could pick the eye-boogers out of every character's head.

This whole wedding thing goes on for way too long, and culminates in Justine leaving her husband in the middle of wedding night sex and instead fucking some idiot who works with her on the golf course sand pit. 

"Hmmm...something isn't right here..."

"Ah, yes, this is better."

Oh, and then like a few scenes later, she calls out her boss and quits her job, despite having been given a promotion earlier in the wedding. Awesome. That's just amazing to me. Most of these wedding scenes seem to always come back to one central point – no one likes each other, no one wants to be at the wedding and yet they came anyway.

It's just that so much of this relies on interpretation – you're supposed to glean your own meaning of what this exactly is trying to say. So many of these types of movies just end up bullshitty when you get down to it. Yeah, there is some genuine artistic inspiration behind it, that much is clear, but it just doesn't make it a good movie alone. If I have to interpret things to the degree that I'm just filling in the crater-sized gaps in the movie's plot with my own imagination, I might as well just go make my own movie instead.

Oh, sure, von Trier was definitely trying to make a movie about depression, and the film has certain very interesting glimpses at what that feels like – there's one scene later on where Justine is staying at her sister's mansion and comes down to try and eat something, taking one bite and bursting into tears, exclaiming “It tastes like ashes!” It's honestly a good scene and is very evocative as to what it feels like to be depressed. 

That's just one scene though, and the whole movie is filled up with tons more vast stretches of silence and other vague scenes that sort of, kind of hint at the story, but the story you're waiting for never really comes to fruition. I don't want this to be too much more straightforward than it is – I like the weirdness and vagueness of a lot of the imagery and scenes here, but I'm a literature guy at heart; I want to see more of a glimpse into their characters and motivations and desires. Here, all I end up getting is more scenes of people scowling at one another, and none of the characters really get fully fleshed out.

Oh, but we do get Kirsten Dunst beating up a horse. Can't forget that! 

I never saw a "no horses were filmed in the making of this movie" disclaimer!

This whole movie is kind of like going on a road trip to somewhere and seeing vast, beautiful sights and scenery – and then ending up turning around and going home without doing anything or learning anything. I mean, look at some of the rest of these scenes in the last part of the movie. I'm tempted to think, with how glacial the pacing is, the actors could all just die on set and von Trier would never notice. 

"Sir, I think they've stopped breathing!"
"Keep filming! We need to get this right!"

The ending has some good scenes of Justine monologuing about the world ending, and also another one where they hide in a tent made of sticks against the fiery comet-death of the Universe. 

I guess soul-crushing hopelessness is one way to deal with it, and child's cowboys and Indians games are another. It would admittedly be funny if it worked, though, and the smoke cleared and they were fine underneath those sticks – which really are the only defense against fiery comets bigger than the Earth hurtling towards the whimpering, cowering planet, when you think about it. 

They could still be OK.

Too much of this whole movie is just what you bring to the table from your own subjective life experience – so much so that there's really nothing there in the movie by itself. Some people will probably watch this and see a very evocative, beautiful and haunting portrait of depression and how depressed people see the world. Others, like my friend who helps me do these reviews, will absolutely hate this and find it pointless and dull beyond belief. Personally I thought it was weak with little character development and even less of a real story.

Movies as a whole are like that. Melancholia is an extreme example, and really takes the “subjective experience” thing to a whole new level, being almost entirely reliant on it for the viewer to get something out of it at all, or else they'll just hate it. But the answer, no matter where you stand, is never just strawmanning it up and painting the opposite opinion as somehow hysterically wrong. Going either “you just want every movie to be a big dumb action movie if you hate this” or “you clearly only like butt-sniffingly pretentious arthouse crap and are obsessed with your own intelligence if you like this” is just too far. How about just not being a jackass about it?

I'd also like to take the time to point out that this movie was actually a prequel to a timeless classic released about 25 years before. The events that come after that comet hits the Earth are truly terrifying...

Indeed.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Twixt (2011)

A long long time ago, there existed a filmmaker named Francis Ford Coppola. He made a string of genre-defining films that were critically appraised worldwide – the first two Godfather movies, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation – and he was regularly and rightfully renowned in film fanatic circles as one of the medium's best artists.

That was in the 70s, though. Now he makes movies like Twixt.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Starring: Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning, Bruce Dern

IMDb

Co-written with The Observer and Michelle.

Apparently the idea for this movie came to Coppola in a dream, which makes sense, as I also try to turn all of my dreams into movies. The only problem is, I can't get a studio to green-light a movie about conquering the king of the mole people who lives in the lost kingdom Atlantis with a sword made entirely out of cheese wedges as a metaphor for my own coming of age.

So to get out my frustration, I'm just going to talk about Twixt. Take a deep breath, guys; it's gonna be a weird-ass trip.

We start this off with a narration that I'm sure lead actor Val Kilmer recorded when he was working off a bad hangover from the previous night. He narrates about how there's this town with a clocktower with seven clockheads, none of which tell the right time – which really makes sense, when you don't try to think about it at all and instead move onto something else entirely.

He also says it was “a town of people who wanted to be left alone,” which might sound like a cool premise to set up a story, but really it's never elaborated on – so it mostly just comes off as kinda douchey on the part of the collective townfolk. As far as PR for this town goes, Kilmer isn't doing a good job. He just makes it sound like some shithole with nothing to do, so, I guess give him props for truth in advertising.

Then again, as we'll find out later, the town is also somewhat famous for having vampires hanging out there, which I guess would bring a higher concentration of Hot Topic shoppers there or something, so at least they'd have that.

The commercial for Hot Topic's new clothing line isn't looking too good...I recommend a re-shoot, preferably with a hot chick in that same position.

As for the vampires themselves, well, they're really more of an afterthought; never given real characters or even any purpose in the story. It's really quite astounding that Coppola managed to shoehorn in fucking vampires into this and made them the most forgettable thing in the movie. Oh, except that the lead vampire's name is Flamingo, and that they just kinda hang out on the other side of this lake in town. But I think the fact that his name is Flamingo is the more important part there.

I guess we're supposed to believe Kilmer's character, Hall Baltimore, is a pulp horror fiction writer who is going to this town to sell books. However, when he asks where the bookstore is, he's told there isn't one at all, and so he ends up selling books out of this random hardware store instead. So why did he come to this town again? Did he just pack his shit into his car and go 'alright, time to go drive in a random direction until I find a town shitty enough to just let me set up camp without warning'? I mean, either that or his agent massively fucked up somewhere along the line.

A vision into Val Kilmer's future.

His only real guest is Sheriff Bobby Lagrange, played by Bruce Dern, later of the much better movie Nebraska. I love one of Lagrange's first lines: “How does it feel to be a bargain basement Stephen King?” Well, I'd imagine not very good. Lagrange then proceeds to just sort of take one of Hall's books without paying and have him sign it, saying he's one of his biggest fans – gee, with fans who insult you and take your books without paying, who needs enemies?

"Also, your penmanship sucks."

Then, I guess, Lagrange wants to show Hall this dead body in the morgue as an inspiration for a new book, which Lagrange wants to help write, or something. The body for some reason is just held in the sheriff's office, and still has the stake that was used to murder her sticking out of the top of the body, because why remove that, anyway? Just leave it there as a warning to everyone else. A warning to what, you may ask? Uh...to not play with large wooden stakes, I guess...

"So why did you leave that stake in the body? Why not take it out?"
"Don't you bring your big-city smart guy bullshiiiiiit in here! We do things old school in this town! To make sure our dead bodies don't turn into vampires, we leave the stakes in for 30 days after!"
"I've never heard that about---"
"SILENCE!"

Hall goes out and finds this old hotel where apparently Edgar Allen Poe once stayed – pfft, yeah right, but whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night! He then partakes in one of the movie's favorite pastimes – getting into a Skype argument with his wife over money.

Skype chats are instant drama!

You know, I guess these scenes could be way worse, but they're pretty fuckin' bad coming from the guy who once gave us the masterfully crafted destruction of Michael Corleone's familial relationships, is Val Kilmer whining to his wife over Skype really the best we could expect? Here's one of the lines he delivers, so make up your own minds: “People ask why I'm so good at writing about witches, and I tell them it's because I married one!”

Riveting. Just...riveting.

Then he goes for a walk in the woods and the movie loses its mind! Apparently, while walking in the woods, he runs into this young girl played by Elle Fanning, who was in the much better Super 8 the same year as this came out. The girl has a conversation with Hall about, I don't know, her braces or something.

"I think my braces make me look ugly."
"No, the Anne Rice-wannabe makeup is what does that!"

Then she says she really enjoys Hall's books, so I guess it's good that he managed to find a thirteen-year-old girl who enjoyed his work! I wonder what pops up on Amazon's “also recommended” feature when you buy his shit?

Yeah, sounds about right. She also says she couldn't make it to Hall's book signing because she didn't know what time it was, on account of the seven clock faces all telling different times in the town. Which, again, isn't a ridiculous idea at all for a town to adopt that! Pfft, I mean, telling time is for losers.

Anyway, he then loses track of her and finds this mysterious house in the woods where some weird stuff is going on with a creepy priest guy hoarding 10 or so children into the basement, or some shit like that. Apparently the Elle Fanning girl is there too. I don't know – it's a very dreamlike, weird sequence and doesn't really have much context right now. The girl gets into an argument with the priest-looking dude, saying she “knows what he did,” but they separate and nothing comes of it yet.

Oh, and sometime during this weird sequence, he also runs into Edgar Allen Poe, because why not?

Well, never seen Edgar Allen Poe erotica before, so there is that novelty...

If none of this makes any sense to you, well, it's because most of that sequence was in the past, and Hall can now visit the past, or dream world, or whatever it is, when he falls asleep. This isn't really established very well at all, and the story as a whole is very muddled and hard to follow overall.

Hall investigates a bit, and even goes to a library – which I'm just now realizing would have been a much better place to hold that fucking book signing than a goddamned hardware store. That's a minor detail, but what else am I supposed to focus on? I get that Hall is reading up on the town history of some murders or something, but I'm not really convinced Val Kilmer can read – he did say yes to this script, after all.

There's another sequence where Hall goes to see the police chief and has to call the operator to get the phone number so he can call inside and get them to let him in. Then he knocks on the door and the deputy guy is in there anyway – so the entire thing was pointless. Amazing. The deputy goes on this whole spiel about it being Sunday so the sheriff's office is closed – then why he is there? The movie has no idea either.

"This town is so shitty, we just converted my house into a sheriff's office! MY LIFE IS ENDLESS MISERY!"

For that matter, the sheriff's office is just closed on Sunday in this town? I get that it's a small town, but come on, does crime take a break on Sundays? Are you just operating on good faith?

I guess Hall gets the idea to write a story about the town because of his dream sequence, which he gets the title “The Vampire Executions” from LaGrange. Speaking of that crazy old coot, LaGrange is apparently so into this vampire crap that he made a little wooden model of the execution chair, complete with a little girl doll in it getting murdered - with painted blood on it, mind you - when he presses a switch.

That's it, game over man!

I just...really have no fucking idea what mushrooms Coppola ate when he was making this, but I have a feeling they're the same ones needed to actually understand what the hell this movie was going for.

There's also a billion more scenes with the split-screen thing going on for Skype calls. He tells his wife about the book idea, and then he talks to this old coot from his publishing company, who is very insistent that he not use the “fog on the lake” line in his opening scene, as well as just kinda pushy in general. He really just seems way too eager and energetic. It's like, c'mon buddy, you're in Twixt, you can just relax now.

Then the very next scene, we get Hall sitting in front of a computer screen like a goddamn web-blogger trying to write the opening of the novel. Because this movie is a horrible abomination against good taste, he apparently can't think of anything that ISN'T the “fog on the lake” line to open the story – I guess he's a shitty writer; whodathunkit.

Boy, Dean Koontz's later work under a pseudonym really isn't that good, huh?

After a way-too-long scene of him trying to write, the movie just gives up and he starts rambling about gay basketball players from the 60s and all sorts of other completely random nonsense that sounds like I'm making it up – but no, rest assured, it's really in the movie. Why? I have no idea. And frankly, I don't really want to know. Coppola...I think your movie is broken beyond repair. This whole thing is the cinematic equivalent to a Blue Screen of Death – it's just done.

This about sums up the entire movie.

Or, wait, I got a better one – do you guys remember that Homestar Runner cartoon about the virus on Strong Bad's computer? That's what this movie is. Just complete random bullshit, getting more and more insane and incomprehensible with each scene and eventually kind of imploding on itself.

Then we get a scene where Hall breaks into the sheriff's office in the middle of the night to examine that body with the stake in it. I'm just fucking astounded that the sheriff's office is locked on a Sunday morning but then at night it's apparently wide open for anyone to break in. But hey, why make sense now?

"Why couldn't I have just come in the next day and asked about this in public, seeing as they're obviously cooperative with me so far? Because...well, I'm just a fucking idiot."

Because the movie isn't done ritualistically murdering our brain cells, we get a scene where Hall and the sheriff's guys actually use a Ouija board to try and contact the dead girl to see if they can figure out who killed her. Why bother with actual investigations? It's not like you're police officers or something! Just use a Ouija board; it's how all the best detectives do it. I mean I still haven't seen True Detective, but I'm pretty sure they do this kind of shit all the time on that show.

When your detective team is so sad you have to invite a random little kid who gets zero lines in the film into your group. Yes, really - that kid is never introduced as a real character and has no lines. But that doesn't surprise me at this point.

If these scenes I'm describing sound splattershot-random to you, it's because they pretty much are. None of these scenes really have any point to them and most of them end quite abruptly without accomplishing much in terms of the story. While I can see what Coppola was going for with the story, the way it's told really is pretty slipshod-poor. There's just no coherence to any of this and it's making it even kind of hard to write this review. They've finally done it! They've created the Anti-Cinema Freaks movie! A movie so incomprehensible I can't even describe it right!

What else is there to talk about? The scene where he confronts those vampires across the lake and nothing comes of it?

When the kid with lipstick, mascara and a black cape seems like the more sensible one in your movie.

Nah.

Maybe the scene where it's finally revealed, after a lengthy shouting match in Hall's hotel room, that Sheriff Bobby LaGrange was the "wooden stake" killer all along, because why wouldn't he be? There were so many clues, if you skipped to the end of the movie and watched the ending first. I mean otherwise it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever as there were zero clues. But whatever!

We then get another acid trip flashback where we see that  the creepy minister guy from the past killed all of the kids in his care because he was afraid of them getting turned into vampires. That is just...so logical, and makes so much sense, that I can't even come up with words to describe it. It's just the zenith of filmmaking and storytelling.

Then we see the Elle Fanning girl from before, who apparently tried to run away, and so he did the logical thing and kidnapped her, chaining her to the wall in a creepy out of the way building and torturing her.

I guess she got turned into a vampire somehow, but even that's not very clear.

So what was this guy's plan again? Vampires exist, so kill every human being you can rather than let the vampires get them? Well when you put it like THAT it sounds...completely batshit. Thanks for more murdered brain cells, movie!

Whatever – just get to the scene where Hall looks longingly over the random cliff we haven't seen before and sees his dead daughter's face reflected in the water for no reason:

Apparently Elle Fanning was Edgar Allen Poe's lost Lenore, or some shit like that. And yes, he is rolling in his grave right now!

Oh yeah, I did forget to mention that subplot? About the dead daughter? I'm just heartbroken over this now. How can I be trusted to review things in a professional manner at all? Eh, on second thought, it doesn't really matter.

Then Hall goes back to the sheriff's office where he finds the vampire-ghost of Elle Fanning waiting under the sheet to kill him, in a very bloody and violent manner...

...only for him to then wake up in a chair in a nice office, handing the book he just wrote to the publisher. Yes, I'm dead serious. This whole thing was basically just an allegory for a hack writer stealing someone else's ideas and using them as his own to make money. Truly worth all the fever-dream sequences and non-sequitur dialogue, right?

Even better is the ending text scroll we're left with:

Yes, the fact that Hall's new book did “pretty good business” really did deserve priority over the next bullet under it, which says that LaGrange was a murderer. Book sales always trump the lives of dead people. Great list there, movie!

Okay, I'm about ready to check into the psychiatric ward after this movie. I seriously just don't even know, man. I mean, it's awful, it really is – the acting's either wooden or extremely overdramatic, the story is a hackneyed mess which the numerous over-long dream sequences don't help, most scenes go nowhere, and the twist at the end is so random that I feel like it was just made up on the spot when Coppola wrote that scene.

But strangely, it isn't the worst thing I've ever seen – I mean, it does have a certain personal feel to it that likely comes from the fact that Coppola wrote, directed and produced the thing. And to be fair, despite the film's complete insanity, there really is nothing else like it out there – it is one of a kind, for better or for worse.

Plus, it's really funny to watch and riff on with friends. Never underestimate the power of that virtue.

My only lingering question about all this is, since Val Kilmer was once Batman, and one actor who used to be Batman got a super-cool meta-comedy film about his career, when do we get Kilmer's version of the same? My guess after seeing this movie is, not any time soon.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

The Thing (2011)

Merry Christmas! This movie has snow in it. It must be Christmassy, right? Right?!

Sometimes Hollywood cranks out really interesting, good movies. Other times they get the idea to take perfectly good horror movies and “remake” them in a way that, while not doing anything terribly different on the surface, is actually the Devil incarnate when you really think about it.

I mean, it's not a real remake. Okay. It's a prequel. I'll disregard the obvious fact that most prequels are festering boils on the face of cinema. It's a prequel to the fucking Thing from 1982, one of the scariest movies ever made by anyone. That's a pretty tall order. That's not just something you can throw together in an afternoon. But apparently some douchebags decided they could, and that's why The Thing (2011) exists!

Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.

Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton

IMDb

And there's your bedtime story, kids – a cautionary tale, of when Hollywood producers try to remake a classic movie but also simultaneously don't care. The punishment they get at the end is a plague of endless explosive, fiery diarrhea. Or that's what I'm telling myself happened anyway.

We start this off with a bunch of trucks driving to a base in a vast empty white wasteland, which is the same as the vast empty wasteland of the minds who thought this would be a good idea. Yes that was a cheap shot. I should probably actually review the movie instead of taking potshots, huh?

Apparently, just like in the original, we get a bunch of scientists doing scientist-y things in this arctic base I guess. The only difference is that one of them is a woman, played by Mary Elizabeth “Ramona Flowers” Winstead. The character is as bland as any other and has no personality, but she's a woman, and she has tits, so even though you can't see them under her bulky-ass jacket, that makes it worth the writers' time to put her in the film. Just the mere suggestion power is enough.

Not that a female character wouldn't be welcome in a good script, but in this one there's just no reason for it other than "hey! We need something different from the 1982 one!"

Not like the the dialogue is much better. Just listen to this. Or, read it, you know:

GUY: I was hoping to get an American newspaper.

MARY ELIZABETH: What information did you need?

GUY: I wanted to check on how the Cavaliers were doing.

MARY ELIZABETH: Oh, well I don't follow football.

GUY: They're a basketball team.

Amazing how insightful and interesting that dialogue is, huh?

They find the alien frozen in a block of ice at the base, I guess, and start trying to thaw it out. This sequence is really suspenseful since we don't know at all yet that these people are going to die and then the alien is going to get out and go to the other base where Kurt Russell is hangin' out. Nope. We're totally holding our breaths on that one!

Anyway, they examine the frozen alien back at the lab and we get some more boring-ass exposition as they try to figure it out. I was going over in my head while watching this exactly WHY this is so much worse than the first one even despite having the same basic traits. Sure, it isn't as well written, but why does this one specifically make me want to punch someone (usually the Hollywood exec who green-lit it)? Well, it's probably a lot to do with the fact that all this exposition where the characters are wondering what the alien is, is pretty much boring to us. We fucking know what it is already. There's no mystery for us.

So really all we're left with is shitty scenes where the head scientist who has a stick up his ass so far I'm surprised he isn't just a shishkebab at this point pulls Winstead's character aside and goes, “Don't contradict me, your only job here is to get that creature out of the ice.” Even though she was trying to help when she offered suggestions – but I guess being a fucking dick for no reason other than to swing your bloated ego around is cool. And I guess this guy just forgot that Winstead's magical main character powers make her automatically right about everything.

"I am the boss of everyone!"

There's also this other guy, who constantly looks confused or amazed at everything and all his dialogue is literally just pointing out the obvious and dumbing down the explanations for the audience.

Was Keanu Reeves not available? Did you really need this guy just to point out the obvious in your patchwork script?

If all of this was too serious and intellectual for you, don't worry. We have a party scene full of people playing banjos and dancing! What's that? Atmosphere and tension like the original had? Nah. Just throw in more banjo playing scenes.

Exactly what I wanted when I turned on a Thing remake.

So unfortunately, the party is broken up when one dude comes across the alien, which isn't as impressive due to the fact that it's all very poor CGI. More on that later, but seriously, just look at this shit:

The best gore scenes always look more like jigsaw puzzles being taken apart rather than actual human beings dying. It's just kosher.

Oh yeah. Totally worth making this movie at all when this was the type of monster design you went with, right?

So I guess some more very rote, boring “discovery” scenes plod along with Winstead and the other interchangeable jackasses discovering that the monster is replicating people and that it could be any of them. It's all very predictable and dull, again, because we know the story behind it. It's the same exact thing as the 1982 version except worse. How many different ways can I say this? Do I have to make a flow-chart complete with pictures to make this review interesting and make up for just repeating the same stuff over and over again about why the movie is bad?

Sure, a few people die, and you get some halfway-decent ambiance with the cold winter nights outside, but none of it is arresting. The formula is the same – We get a few gross-out CGI scenes, Winstead says something true about the monster, nobody believes her because she is a woman and the main character, and then the scientist leader guy says something arrogant while that other guy just looks bewildered and repeats whatever the scientist leader said. That's the whole rest of the movie. I dunno, man, that icepick lobotomy is starting to look pretty good right about now.

"I'M SORRY I TOLD YOU I DIDN'T LIKE YOUR NEW CIRCUS ACT!"

"Dammit, Angela; again? I told you I'm not into anthropomorphic spider-human hybrids! Now put your clothes back on."

Then we get a very lethargic, boring 45-minute climax in which everyone dies except Winstead and Joel Edgerton, because they were the best looking in the entire cast. Oh and we also get to see the really goofy looking spaceship straight out of a Saturday morning superhero cartoon.

I didn't know the rejected Tron: Legacy sets were so easy to steal.

Why bother even showing us the spaceship? It just feels like the writers went, “oh, this is too similar to the original! Better shoehorn in something pointless and ridiculous that doesn't even jive with the story!”

Then we get a really predictable, seen-it-all-before ending where Winstead gives Edgerton a big speech for the audience about how she figured out he's actually the alien in disguise because his earring was on the wrong side, and then kills him. Why would she bother explaining that to the alien at all? Just fucking kill it! It's not that hard. The idea that she would really take the time to say all this is just icing on the shit-cake of the rest of the movie – such dumb fucking cliché. Such soulless regurgitations of mediocre tropes.

Then because there is no God, we get the end credits interspersed with flashes of the remaining characters chasing after the alien after it transformed into the dog that runs into Kurt Russell's camp in the 1982 version.

I guess it's supposed to be a “tie-in” with the original one, but come on; was the audience so fucking mongoloid retarded that they needed to see that in order to “get it”? Were people so dumb that Hollywood really needed to spend thousands of dollars and make a shitty, boring movie like this to spoon-feed them the truth of what REALLY HAPPENED at that other camp when Russell's guys found it at the beginning of the 1982 The Thing?

Come on. The reason the original was so scary was that you didn't need to see everything that happened to those other scientists! The horror came from the freaky shit that went down when Russell's people started dying and getting paranoid – because not only did you get the complete shock and unexpectedness of that, you also got to imagine in your head the horrors that happened at the other camp where no one survived. That's what horror movies are all about. It's also the exact reason this movie doesn't work. The foreboding mystery and intrigue of what happened to that other camp followed by the explosion of terror later on was the core, basic story structure of that movie. The idea that some numbnuts went 'hey, what if we showed what happened before The Thing' goes directly against that and pisses right in its face!

The power of suggestion when you saw Russell and those other guys exploring the abandoned base and seeing the creepy shit in there and what not is so much better, more evocative and scary than anything in this hour and forty minute waste of time. The Thing (2011) is really one of the most pointless, valueless experiences I can remember having with a movie in, well, maybe ever.

The real cincher of this whole mess is what happened to special effects gurus Bob Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis. Apparently back when this movie was still being made, Woodruff and Gillis made a bunch of awesome practical effects for it, which probably wouldn't have made this great, but would have given us at least a few entertaining moments.

That is, until the producers nixed absolutely everything they'd done, claiming the effects Woodruff and Gillis made were “too much like an 80s movie.” I'll give you a second for that to sink in.

Okay. Done? Good.

Because that is just fucking insane. I mean, the effects we got in this movie were so shitty I'd rather just watch sock puppets pretending to disembowel each other and use my imagination. Too much like an 80s movie? What's next – is it going to be uncool to make Shakespeare adaptations too much like Shakespeare, and so you add in guns and some terrible modern acting to update it? Oh wait, that already happened. Have you no shame? No appreciation for great works of art?

It's very clear to me now how much Hollywood just hates horror movies. Lazy, boring, “we can just throw this together and no one will care.” That's what classic horror is now to Hollywood. Fuck that and fuck you.

And besides – this wasn't even that Christmassy. I'm so sorry I failed you on that front. This whole review is ruined now. I'll have to try again next time.

Fortunately, all is not lost. Woodruff and Gillis have taken their too-much-like-an-80s-movie effects and made their own movies, which will come out next year – Harbinger Down and Fire City: Interpreter of Signs.

Now those look awesome. I can't wait to see those movies. I mean they gotta be better than the crap I just reviewed today...not that that would be a huge accomplishment...

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