This prequel/remake of the 1982 John Carpenter classic succeeds on pretty much every level. That is almost as rare as an Antarctic alien.Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is contracted to travel to Antarctica to help a Norwegian research team with their discovery of an interstellar craft buried in a glacier. Frozen in the ice nearby, they find the craft's operator. What they don't know is that it's not dead, and as the ice starts to melt the creature wakes up. One by one the research team and their American helicopter crew falls victim to an alien that can perfectly mimic its prey.
A lot of what I enjoyed from the original were the practical effects. I though they added an extra layer of disturbance because they were real, physical pieces that light bounced off and that could interact. The CGI here is good but it doesn't cross that line for me into awesome. That's really the only negative thing I have to say about it. I loved how they tied in to the footage from the original, explaining all the carnage found by Kurt Russell's character. They even used the original theme over the end credits.
It feels like it was made by people who not only loved the original, but who understood that they didn't have to re-write it to make it theirs. They made a complementary story that didn't try and supplant its predecessor. I wish more people would espouse that philosophy with their attempts.
It's about half in English, half in Norwegian so I'm giving it the foreign tab.
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