Martin Weller and I will be talking about The Thing tomorrow on bavathursdays, and I figured out the audio, and now I was just looking around for stuff we might use, and general talking points etc. And lo and behold I found this sweded version of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and I have to say I was pretty blown away by how good it is. Sweding as an art form is always fun, but sometime hit and miss in terms of innovation, and how you can make a lofi production of such an effect intensive film as The Thing is impressive—and while not eprfect, I was blown away by what they did. And, in case you haven’t heard of sweding, it’s defined by the urban dictionary as follows:

The summarized recreation of popular pop-culture films using limited budgets and a camcorder. The process is called sweding. Upon completion the film has been Sweded.

And gets its name from Michel Gondry’s film Be Kind Rewind (which I haven;t seen). Back in 2008 I saw a few sweded films and got a kick out of them, but this sweded version of The Thing really highlights for me how much this is a critical interpreation of the film, an emphasis on certain parts, and elaboration of specific scenes. It just seems that much cooler when fans are doing it because they love the film and want to pay homage while at the same time intervene in the narrative.