Absolutely amazing entry without any real flaws

Rating: 10/10 (16 June 2011)

A group of scientists at an Arctic research base find themselves under attack by a shape-shifting alien creature that mimics anything it touches, leading them to struggle to know who's-who in the fight against the creature.
This is a wonderfully impressive and utterly fun entry, with a lot to love about it. The fact that it manages to capture an incredibly suspenseful atmosphere, from the extreme isolation of the situation to a series of brilliant set-pieces at the end to ensure that it'll be impossible to determine who's what when it comes down to figuring out the identity of the alien in disguise amongst them. Chief among these, and a film highlight in its own sense, is the classic blood-test sequence, which is just marvelously done and never once gives away it's secret twist, which is highly creative and makes the film all the better when it's followed by a scene of incredible imagination with its disembodied head gag. It's a running theme throughout the film, of intense suspense followed by rather impressive special effects to punctuate it, all done convincingly and never really allowed to dominate one way over the other in the film. It's action is unparalleled, as the finale is a huge fire-filled battle in the basement, and it's never clear who will win out, and earlier battles are just as impressive as the film utilizes a rather oft-overlooked technique of making something to be feared known to loose in a situation where they can't escape, using the situation to its advantage throughout and never letting it go. Even the gore is impressive, offering tons of splatter to shoot across with reckless abandon and making for a never-ending series of great kills. One of the most impressive films in the genre.
Rated R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and animals-in-peril