Through gritted teeth

In Antarctica, only Norwegian researchers can hear you scream. There’s trouble at a Nordic research base when a recently excavated frozen alien creature – the Thing! – amazingly breaks free from its prison of ice after thousands of years to run amok. Many characters die while the Thing squeals and lashes around with its many soupy tentacles. Matthijs van Heijningen’s remake-prequel of/to John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic The Thing, also called The Thing, is an unimaginative mess. Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton star as Ripley-ain’t-gonna-be and Identityless Macho Pilot in a story that refers to its forerunner only cosmetically, without honouring Carpenter’s commitment to paranoia.

Carpenter’s film had the tag line “Man is the warmest place to hide”, and demonstrated that the creature can imitate humans (leading to a classic scene where Kurt Russell’s heroic Macready tests his colleagues’ humanity). The new film pretends to be interested in the same possibilities but pays it no respect. Instead, Van Heijningen is content to have his characters run around their snowy base camp with flame throwers while the titular thing – a terrible looking entity resembling an explosion at the pasta factory – culls the cast. The film’s main problem is its exposition heavy screenplay, which goes so far as to include an entire scene solely dedicated to telling the viewer that there are grenades in the base, thereby foreshadowing the use of said grenades in a later scene. The Thing is a less-than-pedestrian effort and contender for one of 2012’s worst films.

Speaking of remakes, Don’t be Afraid of the Dark, directed by Troy Nixey and co-written by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone), is itself a remake of the similarly titled 1970s horror that apparently inspired Del Toro to specialise in the genre. What a pity, then, that this is the weakest film Del Toro’s to be associated with. After a suitably tense opening scene, the film settles into a strangely slow pace as experienced genre aficionados tick off cliché after cliché, including but not limited to Careless Father (Guy Pearce, in a terrible performance). Pearce’s character is restoring Blackwood Manor to its former glory together with his girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes). When his young daughter Sally (Bailee Madison) comes to live with them, she encounters an ancient evil (I guess) intent on destroying the family in some way or another.

There are some moderately suspenseful scenes but Nixey is too eager to show off his CGI critters to sustain the suspense. He never develops the story to its full potential: when the film’s slightly unpredictable climax arrives, it’s a scene that in a better film would signal the third act of the film, not an abrupt ending. Have I told you about the vastly superior scary movie The Orphanage?

A Long Time Ago in Hyboria

The remake of 1982’s “Conan the Barbarian”, one of the films of the early 1980s that helped catapult the name Schwarzenegger into fame, is a suitably brutal and bloody affair. I’m not so sure that it will do for new star Jason Momoa - who cuts a solid simmering Cimmerian and has a sense of self-awareness that Arnie didn’t have - as the film has bombed at the international box-office. There’s even been a public accountability statement from its script doctor, Sean Hood, where he addresses the film’s flaws. The new “Conan” poses no threat to existing fantasy franchises.

However, when hyperbole fades into obscurity and the dust settles on this expensive market miscalculation, then by Crom, the film is far from the “worst movie ever” disaster it’s come to be called. In fact, as has happened in the past, I had a good time watching a not-so-good movie. Somewhere between the CGI-blood, the loaded and hammy dialogue, absurd 3D violence and computerised matte-ish backgrounds, something clicked.

The film sets the tone with a striking opening scene. It takes us into the womb, showing us a peacefully floating fetus; seconds later, a blade plunges into the sack, and the screen goes red. This is not enough. The camera pulls out of the womb to reveal the agonised mother bleeding from a terrible wound. A battle rages around her. Her husband (Ron Perlman) arrives at her side. She wants to see her son once before she dies. Before you can say “WTF”, the father performs a battlefield caesarean and lays the child in his wife’s hands. “Name your son!” he commands. You know what follows.

A few scenes later, young boy Conan sees his village burned to the ground. Adult Conan (Momoa) sets off on his long gestating quest for vengeance. The man responsible for the earlier carnage is a dark lord called Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang), whose daughter Marique (Rose McGowan) assists him with special skills in obtaining the last missing piece that would complete a mask that serves to eliminate the boundaries between life and death, and makes its wearer extremely powerful. Conan’s mission to avenge his people’s deaths assumes a grander scale, as destroying Zym would mean peace for the whole of Hyboria. Lang looks good with facial scars and seems to take himself seriously, while McGowan (last seen sporting a machine gun leg in “Planet Terror”) has fun with long, deadly nails and a semi-bald head. She’s not really scary, but she looks kooky enough to make you think that there is a limit to her sanity. Not unpredictably, the relationship between her and Zym brims with incestuous energy, and it would’ve been interesting to see the film push the limits with this.

Director Marcus Nispel broke onto the scene with remakes: “Friday the 13th”, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. He has a penchant for bloody messes. Yes, “mess” is ambiguous. Here he shows a good eye for action and violence, but the editing is over the top and choppy. Much of the action, as diverting as it is, is of the “if you’ve seen one…” variety, with the exception of a scene where Marique conjures warriors from the sand to face-off with Conan. This remake lacks the original’s sense of scope and the severity with which John Milius approached Robert Howard’s material, and attempts to compensate with some gratuitous nudity and absurd violence – there is a particularly notable nasal incident that inspires much cringing and flinching.

Conan of course has a love interest, Tamara (Rachel Nichols), with whom he shares a shockingly tame, safe sex scene. (Come now, this is not a spoiler. Surely no-one expects alpha male Conan to hold hands.) Their union happens in an abandoned cabin on the coast of jungle and nowhere. This is the type of film that drops an abandoned cabin into a place where no-one has any reason to habitate for the sole purpose of proving a place for the couple to get it on. What, they couldn’t find a rock pool? (Yes, I know that rocks can be sharp, pointy, dangerous. None of this is of concern to a barbarian.) This takes a special kind of narrative courage/stupidity.

I was never bored with “Conan the Barbarian”. It’s a wannabe blockbuster that’s ended up somewhere beyond B-movie status, and there is much geek and fanboy hatred towards the film from the kind of people who quote the original’s screenplay word-for-word and recreate cut scenes from the “Conan” game from a few years ago with Lego. “Conan” purists should treat this film with caution, but those open to its limited yet undeniable brand of charms can give it a shot. I heed against broadly recommending “Conan the Barbarian” to general audiences.

Note: I was reminded of that mid 1990s bomb “Cutthroat Island”, the pirate wannabe blockbuster flop that missed the pirate frenzy of the Naughties with a good decade. This too was far from terrible, yet nearly ruined careers. I will revisit both “Cutthroat” and “Conan” on DVD (in 2D!) when the time comes.