The Thing (2011)

Dr. Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who specialises in removing frozen specimens (mammoths etc) from permafrost is recruited by Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) to travel urgently to the Antarctic. The Norwegian team there have something delicate they want to extract from the ice. There is an air of secrecy about the whole project.

No good will come of this.

CW: squishy body horror (quelle surprise)

Having not bothered with this on release because it's very much the prequel nobody asked for, I have to say it's actually not bad.

OK so it is obviously a love letter to the original and they had semi-modern CGI to play with so there's a lot more jump scares and gribbly monsters but it didn't deserve to be the bomb it was.

Winstead kind of channels Ellen Ripley and while it hits a lot of the same beats a double bill would actually work fine.

What it lacks is the humour and weirdness of the original. At no point do we get a quoteable line like "I know you gentleman have been through a lot but when you find the time I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this FUCKING COUCH".

Maybe worth your time if you've never bothered 7/10.