The most frightening element of the 1982 John Carpenter horror classic The Thing is the title creature, a shape-shifting alien parasite brought to gruesome life with detailed practical effects. For Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the scariest part about starring in a new prequel to the film, also called The Thing was the risk of not living up to a cult favourite.
"I think there was some pressure going into it knowing that we were going to be watched very closely and that if we didn't do it justice, there was going to be a lot of anger," said Winstead.
But the 26-year-old actress, known for her roles as a Hollywood starlet in Quentin Tarantino's 2007 Grindhouse instalment Death Proof and as Ramona Flowers, the rainbow-haired object of Michael Cera's affection in the 2010 cult comic book adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, saw in Universal's new thriller The Thing a chance to do something different.
"I didn't open the script and see a bunch of retreads of the same characters that are in the first film, who are so beloved," said Winstead, a self-described fan of Carpenter's film, which was inspired by 1951's sci-fi landmark The Thing From Another World.
"I saw a totally new story with new characters and new dynamics."
The Thing does diverge from the typical studio playbook in several ways: it's directed by a first-time feature film-maker from Europe, Matthijs van Heijningen jun, its cast lacks any real big names and several scenes in the film are scripted in Norwegian and English.
Winstead plays Kate Lloyd, a Columbia University palaeontologist enlisted to help excavate a mysterious creature frozen in ice near a Norwegian research station in the Antarctic.
It will surprise no-one who has seen Carpenter's film that the creature escapes, with disastrous results: the charred wreckage of the Norwegian camp is visited in the 1982 film by Kurt Russell's wily helicopter pilot, MacReady.
The new Thing, set days before the Carpenter film, maintains the mythology and echoes some key scenes of its predecessor, but it also adds original elements. Chief among them is a female protagonist - there are no women in the 1982 cast - who is in many ways the opposite of Russell's wisecracking hero.
"I kind of accepted the fact that she's not funny," Winstead said. "She's very serious... She's very focused, she's very intelligent."
She also turns out to be handy with a flamethrower.
Winstead said she drew inspiration for the character from her oldest sister, a neurologist.
Joel Edgerton, Winstead's co-star, said there was a conscious effort "not to try and make her some sort of glamour queen in the middle of this crazy, dirty, oily, ancient base station".
Winstead's film credits include the horror movie Final Destination 3, the Robert F. Kennedy biopic Bobby and the action film Live Free or Die Hard, and she found the opportunity to play a character who wasn't overtly sexy, funny or ditsy in The Thing to be especially refreshing.
"I just don't feel like that's really representative of women as a whole," she said.
"This was the kind of role that to me was the kind of thing I was looking as a film-goer to see on screen."
Van Heijningen, who is Dutch and has a background in commercials, is a devout Carpenter fan (and an Alien disciple) and was adamant about maintaining the original film's slow burn.
"Old horror-thriller movies, they always have a long buildup," he said. "I really had to fight for that."
Winstead's next project is another period piece, one whose audacious premise is given away in the title: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, due next year.
In the film based on the book by Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote the screenplay, Winstead plays Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker), who in this universe slays vampires during his off-hours. Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) is at the helm.
As with the novel, the film is deeply researched and plays its absurd hypothesis with a straight face.
"It feels very real; it's not very tongue-in-cheek or winky or anything like that," Winstead said. "It's really told as though this is the story of our country. It's a lot of fun."
