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Drew McWeeny wrote this in Hitflix...
"In Carpenter's film, the Thing is defined by its desire to hide. It doesn't want to fight. It doesn't want to confront anyone. It just wants to blend in and get the hell out of there. It is desperate to become human and get somewhere it can vanish. It knows how vulnerable it is. And if it can't hide forever, at least it can hide long enough to build something it can use to escape. It is not a bloodthirsty mindless beast. It is alien. It is totally different than us, a long way from home, and terrified. It is equipped with an ability that is insane to us, beyond comprehension even when we're looking directly at it. But the glimpses we get are only when the Thing is backed into a corner. The changes are involuntary. Part of the process. Shock and reaction.
In the new film, the Thing is a monster all the way through. It's a monster so often, that for the few moments it tries to hide as a human being, it's not very good at it. If you took this creature out of the film and replaced it with Giger's Alien, this film would be just a forgettable sequel to Alien.
Carpenter's film film feels cold. Those people feel real. That place feels lived in. There's nothing extraordinary until they're confronted by the most unimaginable nightmare, and they respond the way real people would respond. When they break, they break the way real people would break. The most horrible scene in that film for me is when MacReady goes to speak with Blair, who's been locked up in his room away from everyone else. They speak through a small sliding window in the door, and Blair, played by Brimley, begs to be let back inside. It's a fairly unemotional conversation, but it's terrifying because of everything going on subtextual, and also because of what it means these men now must accept as normal and real, and also because of the noose hanging behind Brimley the entire time, unremarked upon but impossible to miss.
Carpenter's film is scary, this one is just loud.
This movie is too busy jumping out at the viewer and shouting BOOGEDY BOOGEDY!"