The Thing

As an inferior prequel to a superior remake, it's dumbfounding as to why the title remains the same on this insulting inclusion to the canon. Helmed by first-time director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and desperately nodding towards John Carpenter’s 1982 classic, its generic death-to-death scripting carries none of the taught paranoia, rich characterisation or the emotional investment of its predecessor. The slight plot involves American palaeontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) joining a Norwegian expedition of personality-free scientists who have discovered a crashed spaceship and, within it, the supposed cadaver of the eponymous shapeshifting extraterrestrial . Once awoken from its slumber the alien sets forth on a killing spree, picking off those imitable one-by-one in increasingly gory puppetry of human corpse show pieces – complete with CGI that can't match the invention and artistry of Rob Bottin's work in Carpenter's picture. Floundering and forgettable, the final ironic shame is that this Thing fails to imitate its predecessor in any convincing manner. [Thom Atkinson]