Originally published January 7, 2010

Surprisingly, I had been missing out on John Carpenter’s The Thing until a few years ago when a friend of mine turned me on to it. I thought it was a very effective movie and the DVD was great, featuring commentary by Carpenter and Kurt Russell as well as an in depth documentary on the making of the film. Sadly, my original DVD was not anamorphic so I had no desire to watch the film in recent years until I upgraded my disc to the re-release from a few years back. For some reason, I didn’t remember much from the film so it was almost like watching it for the first time all over again.

A loose remake of the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, Carpenter’s version puts us in the middle of an Antartic research team who uncover a monstrous alien who has already devastated another research camp. As the being infiltrates the tight group of men, it takes their appearance and mannerisms leading them to doubt as to who is human and who is not. It is a very simplistic story, one which has been ripped off (or maybe its an homage depending on where you stand) by other films and even TV series.

It works so well because it is very well-produced (one of Carpenter’s best in my opinion) and has a great confined atmosphere of dread. It is really not a scary movie. It has a few jumps but more importantly, it has a palpable tension especially as the characters start putting the pieces together and figuring out that something is not right.

One of the biggest standouts of the film is the effects by Rob Bottin to create the creature. As it changes from a dog to a venus-fly-trap-headed man to even as a man’s head separates from the rest of his body as the alien tries to survive, the visuals of the monster are genuinely frightening, never looking gimmicky or fake. This is a movie that special effects gurus should look to for why practical effects are much more effective and realistic than crap-looking CGI which may allow more creativity but destroys any credibility.

Its a real shame that Carpenter has been on a decline and all but disappeared over the past several years. While I haven’t seen all of his films, I have seen a fair amount to be able to tell the difference between old Carpenter classics like Prince of Darkness or Halloween and new Carpenter dreck like Village of the Damned and Ghosts of Mars. He seems to have returned to form recently with his well reviewed episode of Masters of Horror and his upcoming film The Ward.

Let’s hope that the threatened Thing remake either fizzles out or turns out to be decent. While it won’t destroy the original, I don’t think Carpenter could use another dud, even if its just in credit only.

Do you know what most low-budget independent movies lack? Well, a lot of things normally. A decent script, competent direction, halfway tolerable actors, and so much more are typically absent in some of the lowest of low budget movies I’ve suffered through. Do you know what this movie lacks? A few dollars and a big studio behind it. Otherwise, Dawning is an excellent example of how a few talented people with a modicum of cash can make a film that the big budget affairs should strive for.

Apparently, Dawning spent an inordinate amount of time (or perhaps a normal amount for this budget range) in development in different stages, reshoots, and the like. Given the final product, this is no doubt a good thing. This film even perfectly illustrates why I don’t like being around family: it’s awkward. Chris (Jonas Goslow) and Aurora (Najarra Townsend) are trekking out into the middle of nowhere to meet up with their father and stepmother at their cabin. There is certainly a lot of history between these four as the awkwardness stumbles out immediately upon their reunion.

The kids’ father Richard (David Coral) is allegedly a recovering alcoholic who was absent for a length of time. The stepmother Laura (Christine Kellogg-Darrin) comes off as welcoming and cold in the same breath. The tensions between the family are temporarily broken as a beaten and bloodied unnamed man (Daniel Jay Salmen) bursts through the door and takes the family hostage at gun point. He speaks of an “it” that is outside the claustrophobic cabin in a negative tone. Given that he claims “it” killed his girlfriend, he might be justified in that feeling.

As I was watching Dawning, I struggled to think of what it reminded me of. I tend to do this during most movies. There certainly is something familiar about a small group of people stuck in a secluded location as well as an unknown menace whose threat cannot be easily ascertained. However, co-writer and director Gregg Holtgrewe manages to combine those two elements with a bunch of developed characters almost effortlessly. The closest movie I can thing of off hand is Phantoms, and I cannot in good conscious directly compare this movie to Phantoms. I’d feel much better relating it to The Thing.

Holtgrewe has managed what few other directors have in that I was uncomfortable and on edge while watching this film. The last movie to do that was the delightfully creepy Insidious, which is great company for this film. The director crafts an ominous tone early on and barely lets up except to further ratchet up the tension between the family members. This is a movie that is not about cheap jump scares and more about a quiet sense of unease, which in my book is much more effective of the two. Admittedly, I was getting a bit antsy around the halfway point and feared that it might be playing things too safe. The rest of the time more than made up for it with its unpredictability.

Most everything here was professional as well. While the video quality was questionable (I could easily chalk that up to the screener copy), on a technical level everything was great. The editing was snappy, the sound design was quite effective, and I was even taken aback by the lighting which normally is a thorn in modest-budgeted movies like, I dunno … Friday the 13th. With the top-notch script (even though there are some random, unaddressed occurrences) and the quite decent performances from actors you haven’t heard of, Dawning is most certainly a movie worth checking out.

Dawning will be released on DVD on June 28, 2011. Go buy it!

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***

I spent the majority of Of Unknown Origin on the thin line dividing like and dislike. Upon the arrival of the film’s end, I fell over to the dislike side.

Bart (Peter Weller) is an executive who is assigned a project by his boss that will guarantee his rise up the corporate ladder. While his wife and son go out of town, Bart stays behind to focus on his project. At random, we start to see very close up shots of a clearly over sized rodent. For some reason, a large rat that also lives in Bart’s brownstone for who knows how long, suddenly decides that it will torment Bart, thus making it difficult for him to complete his assigned task. Bart also goes a bit nutty, and starts to obsess over the rat and learns as much as he can about vermin in general (at one point he views an illustration of one with the caption “of unknown origin,” which explains the rather ominous and somewhat misleading title of the film). He spouts off a monologue filled with facts about rats at a business dinner making the guests quite uncomfortable. He slowly descends into “madness” which his co workers assume is simply fatigue from being overworked. Oh, how right they are. Trying to kill a rat the size of a small dog is quite arduous. Well, at least for Bart.

Aside from Weller (and the ending,which I will get to), this movie is alarmingly mediocre. Weller is really quite funny, a trait that he keeps no matter how mad he becomes. In fact, the worse he gets, the more funny he seems. There is a fair amount of seriousness to his lunacy, which is also quite effective (especially this eye roll that he does during a hallucination) and gives his performance believability. It’s not a superbly written film, and no one else gives any noteworthy performances.

The runtime is quite short at 88 minutes, but it seems much longer. This is attributed to the relentless back and forth from work to home, home to work. This was fine some of the time;  it was funny to see Bart have to stay up all night chasing a rat and then try to perform at work, but a lot of the time, nothing really eventful happened at either location. The film would have done well to stop switching back and forth early in the film. The part of the story involving his job doesn’t get resolved, so there would be no loss of story by doing it this way. Perhaps even there could have been a large chunk of film where the rat issue resolves and then we go back to the office one last time.

Which brings me to the end of the film. While the film was not great shakes, I was interested enough to watch until the end. Naturally, I am waiting for an excellent ending to validate this journey. FAIL. If the film was really good up to that point, I could just call it a bad ending, but this just made me hate the whole film and made me think I wasted my time. Essentially what happens is, he kills it, and destroys his house in the process. Then as his wife walks in and sees the house destroyed, he dismisses it with “I had a party,” hinting that he has returned to his former self, as if never having gone through making a medieval weapon out of a bat, nails and other sharp objects. True, one can “obsess” over something and it seem like it was consuming (Angry Birds, for example), and then return to a normal day, but the two are hardly the same. Bart clearly crosses a line, hallucinating multiple times. It would have made much more sense and a better ending, if Bart’s wife and son came home to find a broken, permanently damaged man, who may have killed his adversary, but lost his sanity in doing so. But, no, the movie just ends after this line, as if to say, “Who cares about anything else? The rat is dead.”

I will also say that the scenes with the rat were good. Quite a bit of tension and at least one good jump. However, this is yet another thing ruined by a piss poor ending.

This is a film that I really wish I liked. Peter Weller is awesome in this, and I feel like the poor quality of the film overall will not drive very many to witness his performance.