The Thing (15) **

Dec 4 2011 by Roz Laws, Sunday Mercury

THE THING (15)

HHIII

CAST: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen

PLOT: This is the third incarnation of The Thing, after John Carpenter remade a classic 1951 horror with his 1982 The Thing. Strictly speaking it’s a prequel, ending just as Carpenter’s film began.

Palaeontologist Kate Lloyd (Winstead) is recruited by scientist Dr Sander Halvorson (Thomsen) to join a Norwegian scientific team that has discovered a crashed alien spaceship buried in Antarctica. Aboard is the frozen corpse of a creature, which turns out to be alive and with the ability to imitate humans. As it picks off the team one by one, suspicion falls on everyone – just who can Kate trust?

GOOD POINTS: The special effects have moved on considerably since 1982 and are impressive, if very gory. There are a few tense moments.

BAD POINTS: The overblown score signals when the audience should be amazed or scared. The plot is packed full of clichés. Imagine, the radio is dead and there’s a storm coming! Someone says the inevitable line: “We gotta get out of here.” We don’t care about any of the characters.

SHOULD I SEE IT? I wouldn’t bother.