The fact that makers of The Thing prequel couldn't come up with a different title betrays their lack of imagination and the film certainly isn't a patch of Carpenter's seminal horror scifi. The plot follows the fate of the Norwegian campers who uncover the xenomorph and suffer amidst the ensuing chaos, mayhem and bloodshed. The acting is reasonable enough I guess and there's plenty of action but sadly the film pales in comparison with Carpenter's paranoid, tense feature with only a few wisps of atmosphere along the way and, though the CGi monster has some nice transformations, it's contemporary gloss detracts from the terror. The biggest disappointment however was the handful of lazy scenes which seemed to be direct lifts from the '82 version as if the filmmakers weren't sure if they were making a straight remake or a prequel. It was also pretty stupid of the director to bang on about how his new film would dovetail perfectly with the original when there's a number of inconsistencies and some of the deaths, thinking throat & wrists cut guy, occur off screen and are shoehorned into the last 5 mins.
The Amityville Haunting is a found footage pile of scat, riffing of the numerous earlier movies and the actual 'events'. The acting & script are awful and there's more unintentional laughs than scares peppering the meandering unfocused plot. If I hadn't been so hungover I might have got off my arse and switched it off but I made it through to it's thoroughly predictable end. Please don't make the same mistake.
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