FILM

USA 2011 103 mins Dir: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen

You can't help fearing that 'The Thing' is likely to go the way of the similarly themed 'Invasion of the Bodysnatchers': a classic science fiction story that spawns a couple of inventive adaptations and is then recapitulated pointlessly until we wind up with a really useless version starring Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman. The producers of this latest Thing went on record to state that remaking John Carpenter's 1982 film would be like "painting eyebrows on the Mona Lisa", which was why they'd elected to come up with a prequel. In the hands of Dutch first-time feature director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr and screenwriter Eric Heisserer (previous credits: 'Final Destination 5', the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' remake), however, it comes across like a hybrid of the Carpenter film and 'Alien', bringing absolutely nothing new to the table apart from a bunch of shrieking tentacled CGI monsters and production line squishy body horror to meet the expectations of the modern teenage/moron/American audience. Gone is the suspense and character that drove the Carpenter film, as well as the Cold War paranoia of the 1951 version of John W. Campbell's short story 'Who Goes There?'

Set on a Norwegian Antarctic research station in the days before the events of Carpenter's film, this 'Thing' introduces Ripley-esque palaeontologist Kate Lloyd (Winstead), who's summoned to investigate the frozen beast disgorged by an alien ship that crashed into the ice millennia ago. Ace Danish thesp Ulrich Thomsen (him from 'Festen') plays the arrogant Norwegian boffin who insists on taking a tissue sample against Lloyd's advice, unleashing the malevolent mimicking space critter. Much generic running about and flamethrower-wielding action ensues as under-written characters eye one another suspiciously in dark corridors and frozen wastes. (Robin Askew)

Website www.thethingmovie.net/

Opens: December 2

Copyright Robin Askew 2011