10 Horror Movie Scenes Filmmakers Regret
7. The CGI Thing - The Thing (2011)
2011's The Thing prequel came and went without making much of a dent with critics or fans alike, and one of the movie's biggest bugbears was the underwhelming use of CGI instead of practical effects, which are of course one of the hallmarks of John Carpenter's 1982 original.
Yet director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. did originally shoot the film with practical monster effects, but negative test screenings prompted Universal to replace the in-camera effects - which test audiences said made it look like an '80s movie - with CGI.
In a recent interview with SyFy, however, Heijningen revealed that he regrets not putting his foot down with the studio to retain the practical effects:
"Looking back, we were caught in a cross-zone where animatronics were old-fashioned and the CGI wasn’t good enough... We made the wrong decision to do it in post-production [when it came to] making the monster design in the computer. I regret that now."
While the decision was ultimately out of the director's hands, given that most any discussion about the prequel comes back to the disappointing effects work, you can't blame him for regretting how it all turned out.