The Thing (2011 film)

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The Thing is a 2011 science-fiction horror film directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and written by Eric Heisserer based on the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell. It is a Prequel to the 1982 film of the same name by John Carpenter, and stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Eric Christian Olsen.

In it, a team of Norwegian and American scientists discover an alien spacecraft buried deep in the ice of Antarctica. During investigation and exploration, the body of an alien found within the craft, which they retrieve and store, still encased in ice, in one of the buildings of the base from which they are operating. The alien, though, is very much alive, bursts from the ice, and escapes. They pursue it, and discover that it is a shapeshifter when it kills one of them and begins transforming into him even as they (apparently) kill it.

However, the creature is not dead, and the base becomes the site of a dangerous -- and familiar -- cat-and-mouse game, with no one sure who is human and who can be trusted. In the end most of the team is dead, and the alien is in the form of a dog. As it flees, the two survivors chase it in the Norwegian helicopter, with one leaning out of the open doorway, trying to shoot it with a scoped rifle, thus leading into the events of the 1982 film.

Tropes used in The Thing (2011 film) include:

• Here We Go Again: The ending of this film dovetails into the beginning of the 1982 film.
• Prequel: And not a distant one -- it ends literally minutes before the predecessor film begins.
• Shapeshifter: The Thing, of course.