A big let down despite being a good movie

Rating: 8/10 (24 February 2013)

I went into watching this movie with high expectations as John Carpenter's 'Halloween' is one of my favorite horror movies. I was excited to see this movie- that was for sure The premise to 'The Thing' sounds very interesting with a shape shifting alien who duplicates and shape shifts into humans picking off members of an expedition at Antarctica. I'll tell you why I was interested. Monster horror movies such as Alien are just amazing and so I was excited for this. Being trapped in Antarctica is perhaps the best place to be trapped and John Carpenter's suspense added in Halloween and absolute minimal level of gore made his original Halloween a frightening movie. So, it was hard for me not to have high expectations The acting by the entire cast is very good mainly Kurt Russel who shines as MacReady. The music was great but to me, not as frightening or anywhere near as iconic as the Halloween theme. The story was as I said...just an awesome premise for a horror. The writing and directing were great. The movie falls a bit in terms of suspense as I found the movie very suspense-less and very "not so scary" The effects have certainly been outdated but that isn't a flaw considering the movie came out 30 years ago. I felt that during many circumstances that the suspense level could've easily been risen and would've had me far more interested in the story. There were lots of good stuff such as the ending which like 'Halloween' is an amazing ending.
The movie never really frightened me. Some times, I found the characters and the story falling away from me. My expectations should've been too high as I constantly found myself wondering if any real suspense would be built into the movie. Most of the suspense was held back to the last ten minutes or so which was a disappointment I however believe, that this review will not be one that most agree with and it is far more likely that you enjoy it a whole heap more than I did.