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THE THING Based on the title, one would assume that this new version of The Thing (filmed before in 1951 and 1982) is a remake, but that's not the case. This is actually a prequel to the 1982 movie, leading one to wonder why they didn't more accurately name it The Thing: The Beginning, The Thing: The Early Days or even I Was a Teenage Thing. Whatever its moniker, this new endeavor is, like many prequels, a movie that adds little to the conversation, filling in details that audiences frankly didn't care to discover. The '82 edition opened with the evil alien invader, in the guise of a dog, escaping from a pair of Norwegians stationed at an Antarctic research station and into the safety of a nearby American camp. This new version backtracks to show how the Norwegians first came across the frozen creature, and how, after it thawed, they soon discovered its frightful ability to perfectly absorb and replicate any life form, including themselves. Lead Mary Elizabeth Winstead (as an American paleontologist) is about the only one afforded a personality; that's a far cry from Carpenter's take, in which all of the characters were unique individuals. The visual effects and makeup designs by Rob Bottin (The Howling) in the '82 version offended many critics with their gruesomeness, but the rest of us were astonished by the imagination that went into them, particularly since this was before the advent of CGI. To his credit, this new film's director, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., also employs some hands-on FX-building in addition to the expected CGI, but with little variation in the (sometimes laughable) designs — and since they're in the service of a movie that only sporadically grabs us on a gut level — The Thing turns out to be much ado about nothing. **
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