“The Thing’s” idea of cabin fever is a lot of people standing around and pointing flamethrowers at one another.
This prequel to John Carpenter’s overrated horror favorite lacks even the paranoid tension or ominous silence of that 1982 version.
Rather, the new “Thing” is just another bloody, frenetic monster movie that begins when an alien leaps out of a block of ice in an Antarctic science base.
The American and Norwegian researchers’ fears are generated not by conflicts of identity but simply of what’s around the next corner.
Although done entirely in CGI rather than in innovative makeup special effects, “The Thing” is as gratuitous as its source material in terms of bizarre monsters and deaths.
And although Shakespeare didn’t exactly write Carpenter’s film either, “The Thing’s” screenplay is painfully dumb and obvious, parroting the most basic of dramatic conflicts.
It refuses to even copy Carpenter’s memorable blood testing scene and instead finds its leading lady shouting at her companions to open their mouths.
It’s the sort of thing you hear when an already silly film gets worse.
2 stars