The Thing (Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., 2011)

The concepts of cult horror films do indeed not grow on trees, and the director of this reprocessing of the 1982 John Carpenter classic must have thought he'd hit on a brainwave when he realised that this could actually be sold as a prequel, with the original allowing plenty of room for a lead-up story, rather than just another tawdry remake. Regrettably he then wastes the licence afforded by duplicating the storyline virtually scene by scene, including the one where the beleaguered party has to devise some kind of test to separate the bogeymen from the good guys. It soon gets too frantic, as is the tendency with remakes, with characters we have scarcely met dying in droves and an abundance of digital FX monstrosities diluting rather than complementing the fear. The film's principal merit ends up being linking to the original pretty seamlessly, with no glaring continuity errors, which is a rather modest achievement and hardly worth box office business in itself.

4/10