A fantastic sci-fi horror film brimming with suspense and packed with elaborate special effects, The Thing is an example of genre filmmaking at its finest, while also standing out as one of the few examples of a remake that actually improves upon the earlier film. Unfortunately, I am referring to John Carpenter’s 1982 film – itself a remake of 1951’s The Thing from Another World – and not the 2011 effort by first time director Matthijs van Heijningen’s. Although technically a prequel and containing some minor differences in plotting, van Heijningen’s film, in design, execution and yes, even title, is a blatant rehash of Carpenter’s contemporary classic, one that will be remembered – if it is remembered at all – for its predictable plotting, inconsistent digital effects and an ending already known to anyone who has seen the vastly superior original.

Fittingly, as both a prequel and a modern day remake, The Thing suffers from the fundamental problems of both. In its function as prequel, the story centres around a team of Norwegian scientists who discover an alien life-form lodged under the Antarctic ice. It is the same life-form that we already know can assume the form of any creature it touches, and that is guaranteed to survive the film so it can go on to wreak havoc on Kurt Russell and his team of Americans. This knowledge saps practically all the suspense from the picture, as we watch with acute awareness that the fates of every new character – including plucky American palaeontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead; Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) and roguish helicopter pilot Sam Carter (Australia’s own Joel Edgerton; Animal Kingdom) – are already set in stone.

Similarly, as it lifts all of its concepts and a large majority of its scenes almost directly out of the Carpenter version, the movie contains almost none of the surprise or ingenuity that makes that film so great. The sense of paranoia that any one of the crew members could be “the thing” still exists to some degree, but van Heijningen is unable to capture the same ominous dread that Carpenter did. His direction of the actors is poor, with Winstead especially coming across as ill-prepared and totally unconvincing. Meanwhile, the script’s idea of science involves a lot of looking through microscopes at animated bacteria. The film also takes a typically anti-intellectual position by painting the only objective scientist (played by Ulrich Thomsen; The World is Not Enough) as a pig-headed villain.

Even more disappointing to fans of the original is the pictures middling use of special effects. The Carpenter film is famous for its incredible and delightfully disgusting use of makeup, puppetry and animatronics, effects that saw flesh rupturing, melting and in one beloved scene, sprouting spider legs and scurrying across the floor. What is even more remarkable is that, with only one of two exceptions, the effects in the original are still convincing today. To van Heijningen’s credit, he does attempt to utilize practical effects where possible, and when he does they tend to look great. But at other points he cops out with CGI, a technology that has none of the same visceral grossness of a tangible prop.

There is one area in which the new film improves on the Carpenter version: the inclusion of the language barrier, a story element which adds another layer of mistrust between the Norwegian and American characters. Still, this is not nearly enough to recommend what is in essence a banal, lacklustre and totally unoriginal film.

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