US Edition 15 cert, 103 min
Dir: Matthijs van Heijningen; Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ulrich Thomsen, Joel Edgerton
It’s curious that a movie about a shape-shifting, person-imitating alien lifeform should itself feel like a mutant hybrid: half-prequel, half-remake, never sure which end to cosy up to.
We fill in the backstory to John Carpenter’s (terrific) 1982 original and so make a mockery of the poster tagline: “Mankind’s greatest discovery could be our last”. Erm, until the next one?
At the same time, we replicate the whole arc of John W Campbell, Jr’s source novella, digging around in the ice with a younger, thinner and far less interesting cast.
Establishing who’s human by checking for fillings is at least one novel variation, but tension’s Awol right through this, and the effects are wildly uneven.