15 Recent Horrors You Should Avoid This Halloween

12. The Thing (2011)

The Thing 2011
Universal Pictures

Part reboot, part prequel, all without merit. This rebootquel of the John Carpenter classic follows the basic template, but forgets to include anything of its own. Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton play gamely along, but they're lost in a snowstorm of uninspired repetition and a complacency that failed to win it the audience it was so vying for.

The Thing 2011 isn't necessarily a terrible film, but it is an entirely unmemorable one, wasting Winstead, Edgerton and its chilly environment.

There's barely a hint of the paranoia or snowy claustrophobia which typified its predecessor, and the scares are traded in for dull CGI action set-pieces. Go for Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight instead, which packs in everything The Thing '11 was missing - including fun, and a mean, bearded Kurt Russell.

Contributor
Contributor

A film critic and professional writer of over ten years, Joel Harley has a deep and abiding love of all things horror, Batman and Nicolas Cage. He can be found writing online and in print, all over the Internet and in especially good bookstores.