DVD: The Thing (15)

John Carpenter's horror didn't need remaking – it was just about perfect – so instead Matthijs van Heijningen Jr has plumped for making a prequel to the 1982 gem, with middling results.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead's palaeontologist is asked to join a Norwegian scientific team in Antarctica that's unearthed an alien ship buried in the ice. Naturally, there's a shape-shifting beastie lurking inside just gagging to kill everyone in sight. This gory chiller doesn't have the humour or indeed anyone in it to match the nonpareil action man Kurt Russell, but it provides efficient genre thrills and has two intense leads in Winstead and Joel Edgerton's pilot.