The Thing

The latest adaptation of John W. Campbell’s short story “Who Goes There?” has its share of good scares and decent enough performances, but it spazzes out toward the end. The Thing achieves certain weirdness but winds up being an admirable yet ultimately disposable experience. This film tells the story of what happened to those Norwegians that showed up shooting at a dog at the beginning of John Carpenter’s 1982 film, also called The Thing, and that’s a cool premise. But then the film simply tries to copy the look and tone of Carpenter’s movie, and nobody on this Earth should even attempt such a thing. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays an American scientist hanging with the Norwegians. She winds up brandishing a flamethrower in order to fight off the thing from another planet that absorbs animals and copies them for some unexplained reason. While Carpenter’s film had groundbreaking practical effects, this one settles for mediocre CGI.