Almost
30 years since John Carpenter's tale of alien body-snatching, "The Thing", graced
cinema screens and Universal FINALLY decided to make a follow up to it. Set in 1981, prior
to the events that took place in the earlier film, this story follows the exploits of the
Norwegian group mentioned in that movie, who unearthed the alien and follows the subsequent
events that lead up to it being chased into the American camp.
In this version, a group of Norwegian scientists from an Antarctic research station are investigating a mysterious radio signal emanating from somewhere underneath the ice, when they discover a space ship at the bottom of an ice chasm, and what looks like an alien frozen deep in the ice nearby.
They begin excavating the craft and extract the alien body, which they take back to camp for analysis. A couple of American scientists, Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Adam Finch (Eric Christian Olsen) are brought in to help study it, but soon after their arrival, they discover the creature is not in fact dead (well it wouldn't be would it?) as it promptly thaws out and goes on the rampage in the camp.
Having sent the creature to a suitably "crispy" end, they then make the shocking discovery that the being can absorb and take over the people it kills, meaning that any one of them could now be an alien. But with their helicopter out of action and no means of contacting the outside world for assistance, it looks like the surviving members are going to have a hell of a time trying to work out who is not who they appear to be, before they all fall prey.
Whilst one may question the necessity of making a prequel, or any sort of follow up, to John Carpenter's film so long after the event, the film still proved highly entertaining, reasonably gory and manages to tie into the earlier film quite nicely (I won't call the earlier film the original, as Carpenter's movie was itself a remake). The only thing I will say is that it lacks the air of paranoia of the earlier film and I did get the impression that this possibly started life as a remake, but was hastily rewritten to be a prequel, as some of the scenes appeared to have been directly lifted from John Carpenter's film.
But anyway, if you enjoyed the 1981 version, you should enjoy this.
