Here's the thing about The Thing. Not unlike the title creature, Matthijs van Heijningen's prequel (which is more like a remake) replicates devices of so many other horror flicks that it gets tired. It's Alien meets 30 Days of Night when a crew of Americans and Norwegians dig up something otherworldly in the Antarctic ice. Fans of the John Carpenter cult classic know what happens next: this Thing is alive and can take the form of its human captors. The film is at its most compelling — and scary — when the humans become larger threats than the squid-like creature stalking the ice floes, turning on one another in a Red Scare kind of panic when they can't determine who's who (turns out there is a way — the monster can't replicate man-made materials, resulting in a show-down between those with fillings and those who floss). It's at its worst when laughable dialogue and the CGI-generated monster get in the way of the scares.
