Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
It’s not a remake, sort of, technically, as this is set in the Norwegian base, Thule, shown to us in already devastated form in Carpenter’s outing. However, it’s also hewing very close to the same concept, so a prequel-make, perhaps.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Kate Lloyd, a palaeontologist takes point in most of this film, having been recently recruited to the base by Ulrich Thomsen’s Dr. Sander Halvorson, the expedition leader and all round jackass. She’s called upon to excavate this weird frozen alien thing, and, well, by this point I think you all know how that goes.
I think the most telling thing I have to say about this version is that having watched this only two days ago, as I write this, any fine detail has already fled my memory and I suspect the broad details will have gone within a week, so that’s hardly a good sign.
However, for about two thirds to four fifths of this film I was enjoying it well enough not to be upset by it. The cast is pretty decent and Matthijs van Heijningen Jr keeps things whipping along well enough, aided by a Marco Beltrami score that follows the rest of the movies’ template for just copying the bits of Carpenter’s version that worked.
My one mild criticism at that point would be the switch to CG monsters over the practical effects, and I suppose I understand the budgetary constraints – adjusted for inflation this has broadly the same budget as Carpenter’s – but they certainly manage to look less imaginative, less disgustingly disturbing, and crucially much less part of the same world as the actors. Which is an almost universal criticism of all less than excellent CG effects, so I might have let that slide were it not for a final act that the budget clearly did not stretch to – in particular there’s a shot of them running over the top of a spaceship that looks like it was a rear projection – and it all gets a bit Robocop 3 as it comes to a close.
While that’s arguably nothing a bit more time and money couldn’t fix, there’s a more fundamental problem with the film, and I believe this was more or less the consensus opinion at the time, so no awards for originality here, but there’s just no real reason for the film to exist. I don’t think I’d go so far as to say it’s bad, or a disgrace to the memory of the original or anything, it’s just on its own merits an average film that’s aping a version that is better than it on every axis I can think of, and doesn’t add anything to the formula, apart from making it a bit less of a sausage-fest.
I don’t think I’d necessarily warn anyone away from watching this, taken overall it’s competent enough, but it’s the least interesting alternate version we’ve spoken of, and also the least alternate alternate version, and as such you’d be better served by simply watching Carpenter’s outing again.