The thing that made 'The Thing' such a good watch, was the tension that steadily ramped up from start to finish. It had 'characters' and a story to it. Here, we basically get fast-forwarded to the CGI fest, that connects the dots of a flimsy plot. The CGI is technically OK, but the people being killed by it don't mean anything to the viewer, as character development was pretty much zero. The Norwegians were comic book Vikings, the Americans...well, American and the British chap was straight from a potty mouthed version of Mary Poppins. I half expected the cockney sparrow to bleat out "Half a bladdy sixpence!" on seeing the digitised doppleganger. The two leads that emerged out of the carnage (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton) did a good job, but they weren't given a lot to work with. I was a little dismayed to see they had to throw in the old 'all run away, but the screaming girl falls over' routine, that has by now become a parody of a parody. Personally, I'm a big believer in letting classic movies well alone, and this did nothing to change that view. You know what they say 'If it ain't broke.........'.

This is a very effective, suspenseful, freaky, scary horror movie. I was really blown away by it and am going to watch it again, tomorrow night. There are some eye-popping scenes in it. The movie makers made a HUGE mistake in calling it 'The Thing' which led everyone to believe it was a remake of John Carpenter's 1982 movie. It's NOT. It's a prequel and it would work very well as a 'The Thing' binge showing the movies in tandem. The plot differs enough from Carpenter's that it could've been called any numbers of 'things' and had it's own identity. I'm sure executives were involved in the naming because they can't seem to get enough of shoving remakes down our throats even though audiences have had to endure more than enough of them. This movie had my attention from start to finish and it's one of the stronger horror outings of the new millennium. The acting is all very good and the film captures the air of total paranoia and mistrust. Mary Kate Winstead did a standout job. The creature effects and blended CGI works more often than it doesn't. The movie is also well directed, doesn't rely on many jump scares and keeps you engaged and wondering what's going on and how it will all play out. I refused to even watch this movie for years because the title led me to believe it was remake and by definition would suck. It doesn't and if you want a good scare, check it out.

The hate this movie gets is ridiculous in my opinion. I've been a fan of the Carpenter's The Thing since I was a little kid. It is one of the best sci-fi/horror movies of all time, in my opinion. The story, characters, setting, effects, sound, music, acting...all great. It stands next to Alien as the best of the sci-fi horror genre. I think this movie did it justice and gave me something I always wanted ever since seeing the original: a movie of the Norwegian camp's story. This movie did exactly that. The CGI did bother me, but it seems that they did some tweaks for the Blu-Ray release and it looks much better. The CGI scenes looked too shiny before, very obvious. I just watched the Blu-Ray for the first time and it looks worlds better. The film grain, extra detail, color, and lack of DNR helped a lot. There were only a couple scenes that stood out, whereas before most of the CGI slapped you in the face and stood out like a sore thumb. It is sad how the studio messed with this movie. If they hadn't stepped in and shined over the practical effects with so much CGI, and if they hadn't added the "boss fight" at the end, this movie would be even better. Especially the end.... The original ending sounded awesome and would have actually explained some of the origins of the creature such as "why was it on that ship" "why did it leave the ship" "was it flying the ship?" etc. Mary Elizabeth Winstead did a great job in this movie and all the acting was good. The original is a 10/10 for me. One of the most perfect movies in my book. This movie gets an 8 for the Blu-Ray. Before seeing the Blu-Ray, the special effects bothered me so much I would have rated it as a 7.

I don't remember too much of Carpenter's film to really comment on this as a prequel to that film, but I do seem to recall it was a bit more grounded and, as per other reviews, didn't rely on massive CGI visuals to carry some pretty thin story material.I don't like horror. I really don't. I think it's a stupid genre. But the original "Thing" movie from the 50s had , like I say, a kind of plausibility or grounded approach to the story. This film is purely a gimmick combined with elaborate visuals.I just had a real hard time getting through it as the gimmick of "who might be next" wore out its welcome the minute the first victim hit the floor. And as for the CGI, it's just needlessly expository, and gross in both gory and just silly presentation. That is to say you know it's going to be something pretty scary, but when it's finally presented the novelty wears off. There's also no real theme or message the author is trying to convey. It's essentially a cash cow to keep an old property alive and making money by creating a market tie in. Unlike the original film from the 1950s, which had an actual message to it, this one is just another CGI fest with a hack and slash bent to it.I'll also add that for all the effort put into explaining the science or to make it contemporary for the sake of younger science savvy viewers who demand something that at lest looks like plausible science, there isn't a whole lot of additional scientific effort going on here, again unlike the original film, or even the remake of which this is supposedly the backstory.It's a thriller without meat relying on one trick. And the plausibility or said trick is never tested by the characters. In this way the script is pretty vapid for a scifi film with horror overtones. In short, it's one long corporate film making snooze fest in spite of all of the thrills and action injected into the thing. I mean technically it's not a poorly executed film. If this were made in the 80s by some C-average UCLA director, we might have gotten something that was more in B-movie territory with little coverage and a lot of master shots with unconvincing dialogue and flat performances. Kudos to this film for avoiding that pitfall. But it's otherwise a yawn-fest that suffers from a lack of interesting material and relying on "wow" caliber CGI visuals.In the end it's not that good a film. Howard Hawks' film was noted for being intriguing. Carpenter's was noted for being an imaginative update of the same material. This is attempting to inject money into production values to make more money.There's very little here.Watch at your own risk.