My first viewing of John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing destroyed me. It absolutely terrified me with its insane creature design and the overwhelming feeling of dread and hopelessness was mind blowing for me at 9 or 10 years old. It had a lasting impact on me and as I got a little older It became one of my favorite all time horror films. When it was rumored that there would be another remake of the film the fans were enraged over it and for good reason. John Carpenter’s original was a bomb when it was originally released in the summer of 1982. However it soon found its audience on home video and has rightfully taken its place as the masterpiece film of Carpenter’s career. The film was overwhelmingly paranoid and dark and the special effects are still unrivaled.

Later it was announced the new film was to be a prequel to explain what happened to the Norwegian camp that discovers the The Thing in the first place. This gave us fans a little bit of hope that this might be something different. Having finally watched the film I can say that while it can’t hold a candle to Carpenters film, The Thing (2011) is entertaining, has a little dread and even has some pretty great sequences in special effects.

The Story begins with Mary Winstead’s paleontologist character being brought in from the US to the Norweigian base in Antartica to consult on a find. Once she’s there we’re introduced to a camp of fairly anonymous Norweigians who are hard to tell apart. Seriously they all have beards and Norweigian names that you forget as soon as you hear them. We’re shown the crashed ship and the Thing’s body frozen in the ice. If you’ve seen JC’s original then you pretty much know what will happen. They dig up the Thing, it escapes and tries to kill and take the place of people in the camp. Chaos and distrust ensues and we have a big climatic battle back at the ship.

(SOME SPOILERS AHEAD)

Let’s get what doesn’t work out of the way first. The Thing’s motivation seems scattered to say the least. At first I thought perhaps this was on purpose and the writer was trying to give it a “Scared animal” mentality. First it escapes, Soon it starts imitating people and then it tries to escape out of the camp but freaks out in mid flight causing the helicopter its on to crash. Then in one scene it takes out half the cast of the film and then goes back to imitating people again. Its like the writer couldn’t decide if he wanted the Thing to be clever or just monster out and kill everyone. Why is it careful to conceal itself one minute then freaking out and killing everything the next.

Mary Winstead’s character is basically the Macready character from the Carpenter film but she apparently has a dog eared copy of the script in her back pocket. We see her figure things out way to quickly and too accurately for it to be believed. She’s not the only one either; Another character named Lars has also read the script and just shows up out of nowhere with a flame thrower exactly when its needed. There’s never any explanation given so he must have read the script. The Carpenter film is pretty tight with an explanation for everything that needs one and in fact people still debate who was and was not being imitated. No one will be having discussions like that for the 2011 film.

The work put into to matching events up in the prequel and Carpenters film, while admirable, sometimes hinder the film. It felt at times like more work was being put into matching up events than in writing good characters and a solid story. There were a couple times where characters did things just because that’s what they had to do to explain what we see in Original film.

OK so what does work? The creature design is pretty good. It manages to take the amazing work done in the original and add some new twists on it. Overall the effects work, though there were a couple dodgy CGI moments. Surprisingly they melded digital and practical effects together and it was a fairly successful endeavor. It didn’t really WOW me like my first viewing of the original but there are a few moments that are pretty damn impressive!

The film doesn’t have the slow burning dread and hopelessness of the original but it does manage to be suspenseful and I found myself totally getting into it. Visually its a pretty film and its very entertaining. But its more of a big flashy monster movie than it is a well paced movie of distrust and building dread. Its worth watching and I think most people will enjoy the film even if you hate the idea of a prequel to John Carpenter’s original.
3 out of 5 stars

From time to time I make concepts for haunts that don’t get accepted and those concepts usually get scrapped or modified. Hey, it happens! The artwork to the left was made for a haunt last summer but it wasn’t what the client wanted so it was scrapped. This week I went back and looked at this concept again and really liked it! In fact its one of my favorites from the last year. So instead of scrapping it I’m doing a special discounted package for this piece of art that will go to the first haunt that contacts me about it. The art is ready to go all we have to do yet is make the site template and flash header. This Special Brain Chomping Zombie Package includes the following:

- Full lifetime license on the Haunted house artwork pictured
- Creation of logo for your event or we’ll add your pre-existing logo to the artwork
- Flash enhanced website with animated flash header using the artwork and logo
- Full website with up to 9 pages of content
- Mobile version of site
- 1 year of web hosting
- Flyer, coupon, ticket designs with up to 1 more designs based on licensed artwork or artwork you provide.
- Service and support ending 11/30/2012*

This package is our popular Brain Chomping Zombie package and normally costs $2100 but this ready to go package with the artwork pictured is being offered at just $1500.00! That’s $600.00 off!!

The package is being sold as is with all the features listed and the artwork pictured and that’s not negotiable. If you’re a first year event then this package will give you everything you need to make a big impression this year and save some big bucks in the process. HOWEVER You need to act fast because I only have one of these packages and once its gone, its gone. I don’t resell artwork to separate markets like some of my competitors! This artwork will be yours and yours only if you purchase this package! CALL ME NOW AT 614-408-3137 or email me here!

Give this Art a Home and act now!

Today you are likely seeing a lot of messages on your favorite sites that are denouncing a bill in Congress called SOPA or the “Stop Online Piracy Act”. I get that most people don’t know or care a bit about this issue and just want Wikipedia to be back up. But Wikipedia, like many other sites today, is trying to impress on the public what could happen under this act. The people behind this bill are the record companies and movie studios and they want the power to basically make a website disappear from the internet if they infringe on their copyrights. Now I am not for Piracy but this bill is like taking a hatchet where a scalpel should be used. For example lets say you post photos on Flickr and use it all the time, like me. Then some jerk off puts copyrighted photos on their flickr feed. In theory this bill could allow the copyright holder to petition US ISP’s (ie: Comcast, time Warner, etc) to black out Flickr because they have a user infringing on a copyright. Its “One guy ruining it for everyone” to the max. Its a bad bill and it gives way too much power to government, record companies, and studios. This is only one facet of the bill, they can also force google to remove it from search results and much more! So when your pissed that you can’t access Wikipedia today, keep in mind that this is a real possibility if we don’t voice our opposition to the SOPA bill. Visit http://sopastrike.com/ for more information on how you can participate!

It’s that time of year again! Christmas is this weekend and its time for this years Christmas Nightmares episode! After last years quickly put together episode we decided to invest some time and money into this one. Brian Lashchuk and I wrote up a script, storyboards and decided to actually try our hand at some special effects. Luckily we were able to get some help from a professional cinematographer named Keith Slawinski who helped us make our movie look amazing! We also got some valuable advice from Jon Shroyer on how to shoot out effects shots. Brian was able to find a family that wanted to get murdered in our little movie and they did a fantastic job considering they aren’t actors at all. it was a lot of work but a lot of fun too! So check it out and below and let us know what you think!

The 2011 Remake to the 80′s classic Fright Night went up against a lot of criticism when it came out earlier this year. There were a lot of horror bloggers that outright hated it and backed it up by accusing it of not pandering enough to the original and its fans. Having finally gotten the chance to see the film today I can honestly say without hesitation that Fright Night (2011) is a fun, fast paced, and funny horror film that I very much enjoyed. I’ve been a big fan of the original film and it truly is a movie of its time. Its filled with 80′s horror movie staples such as over the top special effects, scene chewing villains, and homages to the golden age of horror. Last summer I watched the original with some friends my age that had never seen it. While they liked it they thought it was very silly and unintentionally funny. And it is all those things but its still beloved and sacred to most horror fans.

Fright Night (2011) is a carbon copy of the 1985 version but the setting is now in Las Vegas, Peter Vincent is now a douchy “Criss Angel-esque” magician and Evil Ed’s part has been cut back entirely to a smaller role. All of these things i heard about before seeing the film yet I still found myself enjoying it! Colin Ferrell plays Jerry the vampire this time around and he does a great job as the character. He’s menacing, seductive and plays the part with a swarmy-ness that is terrific. Charley Brewster, played by Anton Yelchin is likable and self deprecating. His relationship with his girlfriend (Imogen Poots) is a on shaky ground and he and Ed were once good friends but have drifted apart. There’s something I need to point out about the characters here, they are likable. They’re not spouting catch phrases and giving everyone “attitude” and that seems to be rare in movies today.

The biggest thing that’s wrong with this movie is Peter Vincent. While I ended up liking his character by the end of the film, I still don’t understand why they didn’t make the character something more in tune with the original? Why wasn’t he a 1980′s horror actor? Why didn’t they have Chris Sarandon play the part and have the original Fright Night be part of this world? It was a real missed opportunity and just goes to show that studios just don’t get it when it comes to horror films. But this doesn’t kill the movie and once you resign yourself to the fact that Peter Vincent is a dbag then you can get past it and enjoy the movie.

Yes the special effects are all CG and sometimes not the best CG either. Yes the story is very similar to the original 1985 version but its worth checking out and if you try to get past your own nostalgia you might even enjoy it. I’m a big horror fan and I get the reasons why horror bloggers my age disliked or hated this film but what these people keep forgetting is that teenagers of today are going to see these films and they’re not going to know or care who Tom Atkins is. While it would be great to see some character actors from the 80′s show up in this movie, the studios aren’t going to take that risk and that’s too bad. However as far as modern remakes go of classic 80′s horror films, Fright Night (2011) is at least a fun ride with good acting and likable characters and that’s more than I can say for most remakes.