I should first clarify for anyone not familiar, this version of The Thing is a prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter movie. It takes place in 1982 at the Norwegian camp in Antarctica and shows how the alien craft and creature (the "thing") were discovered. It shouldn't be a surprise, though, that the trajectory of this movie very closely follows that of the John Carpenter movie. Many people I've talked with about this movie (before having seen it) were of the opinion that you really can't do any better than that the Carpenter version, but I felt this new version was fairly close in quality. The biggest hurtle to this new version is that we already know what the creature is capable of and how it works. At least in the Carpenter version the capabilities of the creature were still a mystery and when you see a head split off from the body and crawl around like a spider it was unbelievably freaky... now when you see an arm split off and walk around like a spider-thing, you kind of feel like you've been there, done that.Overall, I enjoyed this movie as a well put-together creature movie. It feels very much like other creature movies such as Alien and while not quite that good, is still a great deal of fun, well paced, and well acted. It should also be noted that, even in this age of spectacular CG effects, this movie still used a number of practical creature effects, though I wasn't really able to distinguish them from the CG effects. I'm going to say that's a good thing... Maybe the only major downside other than what I have already mentioned, are the numerous plot holes. I am generally willing to brush those off in favor of "stop thinking so much and enjoy the movie," but some were pretty questionable. These aren't really flaws with this particular movie, I think the original John Carpenter version also suffers from the same logical flaws. It's a little bothersome, but I don't think I've decided I care enough for it to negatively impact my feelings on the film.
