Review of The Thing (2011) by Zoezoezoe — 13 Feb 2012

I loved the 1950's version, put off watching the John Carpenter 1982 version for a long time (because I knew I would get scared) but I was eager to see what the recent prequel to The Thing would be like! Would it be frightening like the 80s film? Or just another sad excuse for a film because they wanted to pump out a prequel/re-make? That seems to be the go these days.

BUT while laughing at some of the puppets and special effects used through the film, it was about as good as any alien prequel was going to get! They built up a good detailed story that led straight into the original film, the Norwegian characters were played by Norwegian men and not American actors with crappy accents and they kept the right amount of horror without making me hide under the doona more than once! They may have gone a little overboard with the puppets used to replicate the aliens emerging from the human hosts, but I'm unsure whether it was purposefully done to look like the 80's version or not. They were very well done, but they just made me giggle.

John Carpenters The Thing is a bit of a cult classic among sci-fi lovers, but this one doesn't quite take the cake. It's a good film but has nothing on its original counterpart. I recommend watching it though because, well, how else do you know how the aliens came to be in the snow...