I liked it but it ain't great. A lot of the characters are interchangeable and the CGI is truly awful; some of the stuff looks only a notch away from Mummy Returns-quality. Act two's the best once the film starts focusing on the paranoia and Americans vs. Norwegians.

Not a hair on the ass of the '82 film, but taken on its own terms, it's a good, fairly imaginative horror film.

B-

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the only good part of the movie and that's because she is hot.

My review: http://www.worldofkj.com/article.php?i=472

Why do you want a film version of the Avengers if its already been done the best it'll ever be in the comics and in tv movies?

I miss reading Slinger's reviews - - I do catch them occasionally on the front page, but I never to click out of the flow of the review thread just to read them.

I didn't hate it, but its instantly forgettable. It offers nothing new, and even less than the original. There is a solid 30 minutes in the middle, but none of the characters are really memorable, and over the course of about 7 minutes everything is resolved. And it was pretty easy to spot out who was the thing throughout. They spent so much on the beginning (Discovery) and the ending that the more interesting aspect that was the most like Carpenter's is given a back seat. Now that's not a bad thing, as I would have loved for it to tell us more about the Thing with more research or something on the ship, but it doesn't tell us anything, I mean those lights looked cool, I wouldn't have minded if that Thing at the end still in human form explained a little bit more. And the music kind of kills a lot of suspense.

Of all the Carpenter remakes, I will say is easily the best as the performances are fine, the setting is there and on its own its probably one of the better horror films this year with some good gore, and a decent amount of who done it. As a companion piece though, there was so much potential to be there, but it comes up short as we all knew it would.

C+ as a followup or leadup
B on its own merits

Here's my question though

How does her disappearance leave a gaping hole? Carter told her there was a Russian outpost fifty miles away. She went there.

That seems uncalled for!

This film is little more than a Thing itself: a carefully constructed duplication that ultimately reveals itself to be hollow, ugly, and far from the real thing. Though it begins with the best intentions, and does its best to pay respects to Carpenter's original, it soon resorts to merely copying the creature designs (albeit with terrible CGI) and narrative beats, proving itself to be little more than a remake in prequel's clothing. But while Carpenter's film dealt (for the most part) in nuance, subtlety, and ambiguity, this one chooses to utilize cheap scares, OTT action, and slavish adherence to genre formulas. Instead of the unsettling, suspenseful feeling cultivated by the original, this one prefers to mimic schlocky monster movies. Ultimately, the only worthwhile sequence comes during the end credits, and that's hardly enough to make up for what came before it.

Skip this and just watch the 1982 film again.

I was expecting to hate this, but the formula still worked and I was feeling grossed out and unsettled on multiple occasions. I agree with all the critisicms - a lot of the scares are cheap, and the CGI is frequently distracting. Additionally, I would add that they misuse the monster, giving it one corporeal form in the beginning and then an increidbly silly final design whose CGI face recalls The Mummy Returns.

Yet at its best, this Thing does manage to build dread and deeply unsettle. The kitchen stalking scene in particular got me to jump out of my seat. I dig that they made this Thing a lot more aggressive than in the Carpenter version, and there are some admirable attempts to play with the formula. But ultimately, this is a horror remake, with many of the failings one would expect. It's a shallower, sillier film than the original... But the template is strong enough to make this worth a viewing for any casual horror movie fan.

Much better than I was expecting after hearing mostly negative things about it. It was surprisingly entertaining. I liked how it lead into the original. A solid prequel. Maybe you just need to have low expectations. I didn't even think I'd like it.

B

The CGI kills the movie. Instead of being creeped out or even a little scared by them, the CGI monsters (especially the one's towards the end) got me laughing. They just looked incredibly stupid and cheesy.

*½ (C-)

Agreed, apparently the DVD will have the original version of the film, before they CGIed over every creature.