I watched The Thing this week and all I could think of is Vaughn from Community — because Eric Christian Olsen is in it.
But before I get to that let’s briefly talk about the movie. It’s remake of John Carpenter‘s sci-fi thriller from 1982 about a camp of people who encounter an alien THING that inhabits bodies and takes on the appearance of the host. So it’s basically a constant guessing game of who’s real and who’s an alien. It’s like Clue but with a disgusting alien thingy that burrows itself into someone’s body with no sense of form
I never saw the original so I had no expectations of this one. The one thing that I did appreciate was the fact that Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton were in it. I love them both, but I actually dozed off once or twice (possible three times) in the movie. (Then again, I’ve been falling asleep a lot in movies as of late. I think I need to increase my intake of crystal meth.)
That said, the movie was a dud for me. I’m sure if I invested myself more into this time-honored cult horror movie legacy, I would adore it — but I didn’t and I don’t.
I did, however, love the fact that the “thing” of the movie cannot replicate inorganic material when inhabiting someone’s body. That means that when it takes over its host and the host has a metal plate in its head or metal fillings in its teeth it spits it out and leaves it behind like waste. A lot of the people in the movie had metal fillings. This led me to believe that everyone seriously needed to lay off food that causes tooth decay.
The one thing that kept me going in this movie was Eric Christian Olsen. He played some sort of scientist — but that didn’t matter. I just imagined him as the hippie surfer-ish boy with microscopic nipples , Vaughn from Community the entire time. I imagined him performing his greatest hits such as “Getting Rid of Britta”, “Pierce You’re a B”, and, of course, the romantic favorite, “Annie’s Song”.
The Thing opens in theaters October 14.
- Excited
- Fascinated
- Amused
- Bored
- Sad
- Angry
