The Thing movie review

Here's what you need to know; scientist Kate Lloyd is invited to an exciting archaeological find; a crashed alien ship buried in the frozen wasteland of Antarctica, complete with it's long frozen pilot. The excitement turns to terror when the pilot wakes up, and begins to feed on the team, and copy them one by one. Not knowing who to trust, Kate and the rest of the team are in a battle of wits with an extra-terrestrial foe that can hide in human skin.
Yes, I know this film is a prequel/remake of the 1982 film of the same name, a film I really loved, but with that in mind, I'm going to keep this review about this film, the 2011 version.

First off the main characters, how are they? Kate is a pretty cool main character, and not just because it's Mary Elizabeth Winstead, though admittedly that is never, ever a bad thing. I like seeing how her character changes throughout the film, going from the little scientist girl to the badass alien killer you know she'll become, it's a believable change of character, in addition to that she's a pretty smart, and I like smart characters. Really though it's pretty hard to gravitate to any other characters, the American helicopter pilots are pretty cool, and they made for one of my favourite moments in the film. Then there's the 2 scientists, one of them is a bit stupid and dickish, while the other is just there for most of the film, it should tell you something that I don't remember their names, though like I said, the Americans were pretty cool. Then there's the Norwegians, who, let's be honest, are in this film simply to die, there's some cool scenes with them, and they have interesting and useful things to say more often than not, but really none of them really stand out from one another, none of them are particularly interesting on their own, and by the end of the film they've left very little impact. What does however really work is the tension between them when they learn that the alien can assimilate them. Whether it be something personal and subtle like a distrustful look or something more like one of the several explosive confrontations, there's always just an unease to the proceedings, and it makes the film very tense to watch, particularly in the beginning and middle, not so much in the end.in the end things become a bit more straightforward, that said I still think it's really cool, when the thing is walking around playing hide and seek with the American pilot in particular, that is fucking creepy. Speaking of things, how are the effects, effects are a bit of a mixed bag, the transformations are really gory and violent and they look really good, and for the most part the monsters look pretty good, thanks to a pretty cool combination of practical and computer effects. That said, tentacles, so many tentacles, and I could say the same for the CG in this film, I think this film would have been much better if CG was used a lot less, and practical effects were more prominent, this point is made more clear at times when the CG looks like complete crap. On the plus side the monsters look really cool for the most part, only, like I said, too many tentacles, and the ship also looked really cool, for the 5 minutes you see it. Finally, I can imagine the ending of this film can be very polarising, no spoilers here, but I like the ending, I think it's a very fitting ending , though I can understand why maybe some people wouldn't like it.

The Thing is a great little film in my opinion, yes it has mostly forgettable characters and at times really bad effects, but when this film works, it really works, it has a cool main character, some cool monsters, and some great tension filled scenes that I loved. The Thing is definitely worth watching.