I absolutely loved the original The Thing, which I just recently watched, and it has already risen to become my favorite horror movie of all time, which I know is crazy to say. Not that I’ve seen many horror movies, but my previous favorite was Alien, which I had a hard time seeing being surpassed. I had not heard very good things about this prequel, but the only negative that I had heard about it was that the CGI was really bad, so I was hoping for at least a good story. To be honest, most of the time, bad visual effects don’t hurt my viewing experiences all that much. I’ve still very much enjoyed movies with either bad CGI for the time or dated CGI, such as the original Tron, Black Panther, and even The Flash, because their stories were at the very least pretty good.

I wasn’t crazy about this movie, but also didn’t find it to be as abysmal as a lot of people have made it out to be, so I would say I’m definitely more in the middle about it. I’ll start off with my positives, the first being the beginning of the film. The opening scene wasn’t anything special, but the stuff that came after it I found quite intriguing and surprising. I had also heard that this was pretty much a rehash of the original, and I have to say, even though I didn’t care for this film a whole lot, I have to disagree. Just with the opening revelations of the story, new lore and concepts are introduced that I honestly found quite interesting and a good direction to take a prequel. The thing (no pun intended) that they find at the very beginning of the movie isn’t anything new, but it has a new aspect to it that I thought was quite a good way to change things up just a little bit.

Even aside from the beginning, the lore added in this prequel was kind of brilliant if you ask me. They really did find new ways to change up the actual “Thing” creature, and added new aspects to it that both took the story in a new direction and actually managed to surprise me a bit. I could see a lot of people not really being huge fans of what they do with the creature because it definitely comes on the verge of not necessarily retconning things from the original, but it definitely doesn’t match perfectly with it either. While I don’t think this was executed in the best way possible in the actual movie, I do think that it was really well done from a writing stance.

Another thing I loved was how it ties into the original story. For whatever reason, I wasn’t really expecting it to have much connection with John Carpenter’s film, probably because of me hearing it was just a simple rehash, but what they do to tie into it I thought maybe even added a little bit to the first movie, even if it didn’t really need it. I didn’t expect much at all from this prequel, so this was definitely a pleasant surprise to me, for sure.

My last purely positive thing that I have before I get into the more mixed and negative aspects of the film is a little bit more of an interesting one, because it comes with a bit of a downside to it. I’m completely unfamiliar with most of Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s work besides the Ahsoka show, but she really gave a great performance here. She had such a screen presence throughout the film that I would most certainly say carried the film. She definitely commands every scene that she is in, and is the most believable character when it comes to the events that are going on. Now, the downside to that is that she really is the only performance in the movie that I thought was compelling, and the only one that I would say even came close to matching the performances in the original. Everyone else, including Joel Edgerton, whom I love as an actor, gives a pretty dull and uninspired performance. I never once felt that any of the characters reacted the way they should have, and I don’t know whether to blame the acting, directing, or writing on that part.

Now moving into my one mixed aspect of the film, I would say that this is definitely more of a positive for me, but I could absolutely see it being a negative for others. This is going to be really hard to talk about without inferring more spoilery stuff, but with all the ties that this has to the original, once you get to the third act, it’s pretty obvious where this movie is headed. Now, for me, this was actually a good thing, because I loved the ties that it had to the original, but for anyone who wasn’t really a big fan of the original, this would almost surely be a big negative for them.

The interesting thing about all my negatives with this prequel is that they all have to do with losing the elements that made the original so special, and they all make this movie not scary at all. The first one is the pacing. The story is extremely rushed, to the point where it never even really gives you time to breathe or connect with the story or characters. Unlike the original, there is no sense of dread, and hardly any buildup before things take a turn in the wrong direction. This was not something I expected, and not in a good way. When things go boom, it’s sudden but completely unearned, making none of it impactful at all.

With the rushed pacing, you also lose the element that, to me, made the original the most special, which is the mystery. What made the original so effective was how unpredictable it was and how much tension there was between characters, as, at least for me, it was basically impossible to tell who was and wasn’t infected. Now this film definitely isn’t predictable, that is, until the end, but with how fast the movie moves, you don’t get any time to read any of the characters and guess who has been infected or not. This was definitely the most disappointing aspect of the film for me, and was the thing that I was at the very least hoping for despite mixed reviews.

My last negative is the obvious one that everyone talks about. I knew going in that this movie was riddled with CGI, but I was not prepared for how absolutely horrible all of it was going to look. As I said, CGI doesn’t really affect my viewing experience with movies all that often, but here, it’s so bad that it actually does quite a bit. I understand why the CGI is bad because of the budget, but that also makes me puzzled as to why they didn’t use practical effects at all. If you adjust the original’s budget for inflation, both movies have almost exactly the same cost, so why didn’t they go practical? Maybe that’s just because of the talent behind both films, but who knows. Even aside from the bad CGI, the design of the creature isn’t scary or unsettling at all.

So really, I think the only reason I give this a more mixed review rather than a flat-out negative one is because of the way it ties into the original. I could see this being an extremely tedious watch for people who weren’t as big of fans of John Carpenter’s movie, which is, in my opinion, an absolute horror gem.