John Carpenter’s The Thing is one of my favorite films ever made and I consider it one of the best sci-fi horror ever put on celluloid. There’s been talk for years of making a sequel to the 1982 film. While nothing ever came of it outside of some very well-done and well-written Dark Horse Comics were issued and set after the events of the first film. SciFi Channel even had a tentative plan to film a 4-hour miniseries sequel, but after many delays and obstacles to getting the pre-production beyond the concept stage the plan was dropped.
In the beginning of the new millenium Ron D. Moore of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica (reboot) fame wrote a script which would take place prior to the evtns of the first film. This prequel would tell the story of how the “the Thing” was first discovered by the Norwegian team on Antarctica and the subsequent incidents which would lead into and tie with Carpenter’s film.
I am quite excited that the prequel is going to finally start filming this March and into June. The same studio which financed and released two excellent horror films in the past 10 years (James Gunn’s Slither and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake), Strike Entertainment, will also be the one responsible for this prequel. Matthijs van Heijninjen will be directing the film from Ron D. Moore’s scriptment with rewrite work from Eric Heisserer.
The question, I am sure fans will have, is will the filmmakers go full on digital, traditional practical effects or a combination of both. If they even go with option 2 or 3 they definitely need to bring in Rob Bottin and Stan Winston’s Effects House to either consult or handle the FX work. Bottin should just be made part of the crew just because he’s Rob Bottin and The Thing was as much his film as Carpenter’s.
Here’s to hoping Heijningen and Heisserer don’t fuck this prequel up.
I am what one would call an aficionado of all things zombie. The subject has been an interest of mine since I saw my very first true zombie film: Night of the Living Dead. Romero’s seminal work made such an impact in my young mind that, despite the primal sensation of fear I felt while watching it, my curiosity and imagination won out. I was stilled scared shitless for the next couple weeks once night arrived, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about it then letting my young mind start thinking of what I would do if put in a similar situation. It’s almost two decades since that moment and I still think about such things whenever the topic turns to things zombies.
I first came across Max Brooks’ book when I was browsing the web and decided to check out a site a fellow zombie-fan had recommended I visit: HomePageoftheDead.com. It was my first time visiting the site and right from the beginning I saw a link that had Brooks’ book title on it. I clicked it to see what it was all about. Lo and behold it was a for real survival guide on what to do if and when a zombie outbreak ever occurred. I knew it was one of those satire, gag books taking a ludicrous, albeit funny situation and writing a faux-serious work of instructions and guidelines around it. It didn’t take me long to check if Amazon had the book for sale and it did to my surprise. The moment I received the book I sat down and read it from beginning to end in a day’s time.
Max Brooks’ experience as a comic staff writer for Saturday Night Live and being Mel Brooks’ son probably helped in keeping the book from being too campy and also overly serious. Brooks’ hit the right balance of seriousness and yet giving every procedural instructions on how to survive and the optimal way of surviving a darkly black comedic tone to it all. Part of me was thoroughly amused and even laughed out loud a few times as I read through the guide, but part of me also felt a bit of dread in how real his descriptions were and how much common sense his survival guide had for the reader to take note of. I thought the final chapter describing documented reports of zombie outbreaks throughout man’s history was especially well-done. It sure made some of the darker moments in man’s history take on a much more horrifying note.
Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide has been a great addition to my collection of dvds, comics and novels about the zombie subgenre. It also helped continue my on-going interest in the what-if scenarios of such an event from ever happening. His writing balances both satire and horror and the book is much better than it should be because of it. Being a zombie aficionado I would highly recommend this to like-minded readers and would gradually introduce it to those who have no notion of such a topic. One never knows when the fantastic suddenly becomes horrifyingly real. When and if it ever does happen, I know this book will have served me and mine well.
I would also like to point out that in addition to this book is a companion volume released by the comic book publisher, Avatar Press which takes those so-called historical accounts of zombie outbreak incidents and creates a graphic novel out of it. Again, Max Brooks has a hand in writing this book. He took some of the longer entries in the survival guide’s last chapter and rewrites them to better fit the comic book format.
The artwork by Ibraim Roberson for The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks are some of the finest black & white inks I’ve seen and definitely one of the best zombie artwork. Roberson really captures the grotesque and hungry nature of the undead as Brooks’ describes them. Even though there’s no color involved in all the visuals it still doesn’t diminish the scenes of gore. I think it actually makes the scenes even more effective as the reader imagines the colors being there while reading them. There was no need to add to the shock value when it was already shocking.
While I wish they could’ve included every historical entry from The Zombie Survival Guide in this graphic novel I understand that to do so would mean a book at least over a hundred pages or more in size. Maybe there’ll be a plan to make a second volume if this first one sells well. Fans of Max Brooks’ guide can only hope that this indeed is what he and Avatar Press have in mind. Despite not having everything I expected it to the graphic novel was still a find companion piece to Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide with some of the best looking zombie artwork outside of The Walking Dead‘s Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard.
The Aught’s, as some people have come to call this decade about to end, was actually a pretty good decade in terms of the amount of quality horror that showed up on the big-screen. We had some channeling the nastiness of the 70’s exploitation era while a couple ushered in this decade’s era of the so-called “torture porn.” There were more than just a few remakes of past horror films. Most of these remakes were quite awful compared to the original, but more than a few managed to end being good and held their own against the original.
Some of the titles I will list will eschew gore and the shock scares for a more subtle and atmospheric approach. More than a few straddled not just horror but other genres like comedy, drama and sci-fi. If there was one major observation I was able to make, when collating what I thought was the 20 best horror films of the decade, it was that the Foreign studios really came into the decade with a vengeance.
While I consider these horror films on this list as “the best of…” it is still my opinion and I am sure there will be people who will disagree, but even if people do not agree with all my choices it would be hard to dispute any of them as not being good to great in their own way. Like my similar Sci-Fi list this one will be numbered but only for organizational sake and doesn’t determine which film is better than rest. They’re all equal in my eyes.
The Mist (dir. Frank Darabont)
Splinter (dir. Toby Wilkins)
Let the Right One In (dir. Tomas Alfredson)
Hostel (dir. Eli Roth)
A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Ji-woon)
The Descent (dir. Neil Marshall)
Martyrs (dir. Pascal Laugier)
28 Days Later… (dir. Danny Boyle)
Bubba Ho-Tep (dir. Don Coscarelli)
Dawn of the Dead (dir. Zack Snyder)
The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro)
Frailty (dir. Bill Paxton)
Kairo (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Shaun of the Dead (dir. Edgar Wright)
American Psycho (dir. Mary Harron)
Inside (dir. Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Mary)
The Orphanage (dir. Juan Antonio Bayona)
The Devil’s Rejects (dir. Rob Zombie)
Slither (dir. James Gunn)
Audition (dir. Takashi Miike)
Honorable Mentions: Saw, Haute Tension, Drag Me To Hell, Trick ‘r Treat, Dog Soldiers, Ju-On, May, Midnight Meat Train, The Ruins, Jeepers Creepers, Ginger Snaps, Funny Games (remake), Shutter, Frontier(s), Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon…just to name a few.
I wasn’t that too big a fan of the first film ([REC]) and definitely not a huge fan of the American remake which got renamed, Quarantine. The “in-the-moment” video footage made popular by films such as The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield really stretched the need to suspend one’s disbelief while watching the original Spanish-language film and it’s American remake. But then again I seem to be in the minority when it comes to not liking those two films.
With the popularity of both films having made its studios profits it didn’t come as a surprise to see a sequel greenlit by the original Spanish studio with the original filmmakers, Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza, returning. The sequel is to take place immediately after the events of the first film. From the trailer that has been released of the film the same camera-style as the first film remains, but (if I’m to go by how the trailer was put together) this sequel may actually capture my interest. There’s a sense of this sequel looking like a live-action survival-horror FPS game. I’m sure the sequel won’t just be trying to be like a video game, but the trailer sure makes the sequel seem more interesting and just a bit more energetic.
When Tarantino and Rodriguez first created their ode to all things grindhouse with Planet Terror and Death Proof they also put out a word to their directing buddies who enjoyed the same things to make fake trailers to begin and break between the two films. They also created a contest where fans could create their own fake grindhouse trailer and the winner gets added to the dvd release. The winner of this contest was one aptly titled, Hobo With A Shotgun. While the trailer was ok it did introduce me to filmmaker Jason Eisener.
He has know followed up Hobo With A Shotgun with a horror shortfilm that has become the darling of the film festival circuit. His 16-minute short film is titled Treevenge and I will say that it’s one of the most original and inventive piece of storytelling and filmmaking of the year. This little shortfilm is why horror has its place in the filmmaking community as a way for aspiring filmmakers to get their creative juices flowing. This little gem of a film is also why I also love film in general. Little jewels like this make going through the awful films worthwhile.
For the complete uninterrupted short film click: Treevenge
I consider these the best and greatest science-fiction films of this closing decade. Some of the films in the list could be labeled as being hard scifi while some definitely have their roots in the pulp storytelling traditions of the 1950’s scifi publications and novels. Some could be considered horror while others more action or comedy. In the end, they all have a basis in the traditions of science-fiction as their common denominator. They will not be in any particular order since I couldn’t truly determine which one deserved to be top on the list or which was just 20th. In my eyes they are all equally great in their own way.
Do you agree with the choices? Do you think another film belongs on the list and, if so, which one? I’m interested to know what your favorite sci-fi films of the last 10 years happen to be.
Through the Shattered Lens 