THE THING, R ( 1 hr & 43 min )

Quickie Review:  A Norwegian scientific research team in Antarctica stumbles upon an alien spacecraft and an alien life-form buried in 100,000 year-old ice.  But the alien life-form, in suspended animation, manages an escape and terrorizes the team as it has the ability to take-on human or animal form.  Fear and paranoia grip the team as the alien life-form kills them off one by one as it tries to survive, replicate itself, and escape from its vast and frozen Antarctic confinement.

I didn't like it that much because it's the typical horror movie wherein humans act like stupid morons who deserve to get killed-off.  And it wasn't even scary at all; in fact, the only scary part was when someone sneaked-up on a curious team member from behind and yelled, "Boo!"  And the only reaction that I heard from the audience was when a squeamish woman was grossed-out by the Alien Life-Form Dissection scene.

Here are the things that I found wrong about this movie:  The joke would have made more sense had the father been a stepfather, instead!  The Tissue Sample and the Alien Life-Form Dissection  scenes should have been done in a more sterile setting because they didn't know whether or not it harbored microbial pathogens.  Based on what I learned in Anatomy and Physiology, skeletal muscles tend to atrophy when not in use for a considerably long time, and 100,000 years is a very long Time in anyone's book!  So, the alien life-form should not have shot-out of the ice block that quickly.  And when it did, it shouldn't have left the ice block intact with a neat  rectangular empty space in the middle since it was frozen with its "limbs" splayed all about in the first place!  The alien life-form had no protection against sub-zero temperature--since they found it frozen in the first place--so they should have waited until morning to go looking for it.  The team knew that the alien life-form was quick and powerful but they went searching for it with very little protection in terms of weapons.  And speaking of weapons, what the heck was a scientific research team doing with flame-throwers and grenades in the first place ...?  When one of them was struck through the torso from behind, in the lung and heart areas, that man should have been killed instantly.  That thing that crawled on his arm was small enough so that he could have grabbed it and pulled it off!  When they maintained radio silence with a storm approaching, that should have raised suspicion from their support team or from anybody else somewhere in the world that they established contact with.  And exactly how did the alien life-form get inside some of the team members when they pretty much stayed together or close to one another after they discovered what the alien life-form could do to any one of them?  Finally, why did the alien life-form leave the spacecraft's hatch door open as it was trying to escape?