The Thing

An Antarctic outpost grapples with an alien predator that can take the shape of any person or animal that it kills. Writer Eric Heisserer and director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s movie purports to be a prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 adaptation of John W. Campbell’s 1938 story “Who Goes There?” Well, yes, in the sense that it shows what happened to the burned-out Norwegian camp that opens Carpenter’s film—but since what happened to them was pretty much the same, it’s really more of a remake, ringing a few new variations on Campbell’s story (including adding a female protagonist, played with steely resolve by Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Early scenes nicely capture Campbell’s (and Carpenter’s) atmosphere of creeping paranoia, but the suspense and impact dissipate a bit once the CGI starts taking over.