The Thing (2011)
Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton and Ulrich Thomsen
A vessel and a specimen of some kind have been found in the Antarctic ice so a group of people go to find out what exactly has been found.
This film pitches itself as the prequel to the classic John Carpenter film of the same name The Thing from 1982. The problem is this film does not have the same classic feel to it, there are too many monsters, not enough eerie scenes, poor script writing and everything is too easy to figure out. ‘The Thing’ monster(s) look very much like the zombie bosses from the Resident Evil game series and just look kind of poor while at times the film has a very Alien feel about it but not in a cool way. The film tries to share similarities with the original while at the same time trying to tie into it but it just feels cheap and pointless.
Recommend
If you are a fan of the original then I don’t see the point of watching this. It tries to be something but just doesn’t work. There was no need for this film to be made, as it just wasn’t needed. I wouldn’t bother watching it.
TheFriedGold rating – 1/5 – Nothing compared to the original
Film Fact
In order to not try to compete with Kurt Russell’s portrayal of the 1982 film’s protagonist, R.J. MacReady, the character of Kate Lloyd was designed to have traits in common with the character Ellen Ripley from the Alien film series.
thefriedgold 
I just watched this last night. I wasn’t expecting much, and I didn’t get much. I don’t like to instantly dismiss remakes/sequels/prequels, so I wanted to give it a chance, but this offered nothing new.
It’s an exact retread of the ’82 version, just without any atmosphere or half-decent acting. I think there was plenty of scope to discover more about the Thing and make an interesting addition to the canon, but it was just the same series of events that occurred in Carpenter’s version.
It wasn’t strictly speaking a bad film, it just wasn’t very good.
The scariest part was the CG – yuck!