The Thing

Watched the remake/prequel of the 1982 move of the same name; The Thing is a pretty gorey movie but aims for the more horrific scenes to scare you, rather than the usual jump-out-at-you scares. I have already watched the $15 million, 1982 version made by John Carpenter, so I had a decent idea of what events needed to be in the prequel and how it needed to end.

Unlike the original, all the monsters were clearly done with CG, which was disappointing compared to the horrific puppetry from the Carpenter version. Although computer generated graphics are getting extremely realistic these days, there is just that sense that it's not real when thay create something like this. The reason why the Carpenter one is scarier is because they were real puppets and props and you could tell.

So I won't spoil too much, but overall, the movie was a decent stab in the right direction, but it suffered like the Carpenter version, focusing so much on the gore and horror that it built up little plot investment in the characters since there are quite a few of them and many don't last long. In some scenes it felt that when a character died or became a 'Thing' I had no idea what that person actually did.

In all, it tried to be as good at the Carpenter original, but it followed in his footsteps far too much and suffered just as much as the original did. It's simply a case of, it's nothing new at all really. If you're gonna watch this movie, you're going to watch it for the gore. I did have fun watching it, but I doubt I'd watch it again as most of the scares are one-time affairs.

It scrapes in at just 3 out of 5 stars for me.

I also found this remake of the 1982 'The Thing', happily portrayed by Pingu the Penguin. Enjoy!