Movies
‘The Thing’ Prequel Writer Bares All on Twitter
The 2011 prequel The Thing was not exactly well received by fans of John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi/horror classic. While it did its best to recreate many of the things we’d seen in Carpenter’s vision, it eschewed practical FX for CGI that just looked…bad. Furthermore, the reviews for the film weren’t exactly kind. Many felt that it was too much of an imitation (no pun intended) of Carpenter’s remake, ultimately unwilling to take its own risks.
Writer Eric Heisserer took to Twitter to clear the air on several topics that came up as well as talking about his view of where things went wrong, how he was constrained by the events that took place in Carpenter’s script, and how he wanted to set the mood from the very beginning. It’s a fascinating dive into how a writer envisions a movie and how that vision gets distorted and altered the moment the scriptwriter is done and turns in the final draft.
The Thing held such deep promise. As I haven’t seen it since it came out, I’m not going to try and say that it failed miserably. However, as the film is only a few years old and I’ve already forgotten pretty much everything about it, that doesn’t speak too well to its impact.
Final Destination Bloodlines filmmakers Zach Lipovsky & Adam Stein return to their mutant roots with Freaks Part II, their follow-up to 2018’s Freaks. The first look has arrived ahead of the film’s world premiere.
Freaks Part II is the official closing film of Fantasia, where it will make its world premiere.
In the sequel, “Several years after a traumatic escape, we meet Mary (Amanda Crew, Freaks) and her daughter Chloe (Lorelei Olivia Mote, Riddle of Fire) as they live on the road, hiding their powers and identities. They are hunted by the Abnormal Defense Force, paramilitary police that specialize in ruthlessly exterminating ‘freaks‘ like them. Mary is fueled by revenge, determined to find the ADF officer (Lili Taylor, The Conjuring) who killed her first child.“
It’s not just the story that’s progressing with this sequel, but also the gore. Fantasia teases, “There’s also inventive gore – the most we’ve seen in a Canadian film in years – that punctuates the outstanding performances and serious subject matter.”
Mote takes over for Lexy Kolker, who played Chloe in the 2018 film that saw the young protagonist with growing powers confined to her home by an overprotective and paranoid father (Emile Hirsch).
Rafael Motamayor wrote in his review, “Freaks feels like an even more grounded, small-scale version of the X-Men, a sci-fi film filled with surprises, a message about parenthood and wanting to keep your child safe and isolated from the world, and a future star in Lexy Kolker.”
Lipovsky & Stein’s have a packed slate ahead, co-writing Gremlins 3 with Chris Columbus, directing the sci-fi survival film The Earthling for Columbia, directing the psychological horror film Long Lost for Amblin, and directing the sci-fi drama The Traveler for Paramount.
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