Rated R

There are remakes, there are replications, and then there’s “The Thing” of 2011. Based on John Carpenter’s 1982 film of the same name, which in turn was based on the 1951 film “The Thing From Another World” (which was an adaptation of the 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. short story, “Who Goes There?”), the latest “The Thing” is part remake, part prequel, and part reboot. It’s so slavishly devoted to following the same beats, atmosphere, and action of Carpenter’s film that it manages to be pretty decent, in spite of itself.

The only problem with the latest “The Thing” is that it’s wholly unnecessary and redundant—not in the sense that most remakes/prequels/reboots are unnecessary, but in the sense that it tells the same story as the 1982 film, almost moment for moment. It’s an excellent bit of movie Karaoke, one that captures the essence of the original but doesn’t do much beyond that.

“The Thing” opens in Antarctica, where a team of Norwegian scientists have discovered an alien spacecraft buried deep in the ice. The body of the craft’s owner is located nearby. Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is called in to help examine the creature.

The project’s leader, Dr. Sander Halversen (Ulrich Thomsen) is reckless and paranoid about the discovery and demands the team get a sample from the alien corpse frozen in the ice. Soon enough, the alien breaks free and starts working its way through the team one by one. Kate is the first to learn that the alien is a shape-shifter—it can assume the form of any organism it kills. Paranoia rises among the team, a fierce storm rolls in, and everyone is trapped inside the science station with a murderous alien monster.

First-time director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. handles the paranoia well, and when “The Thing” slows down long enough to build tension, it can be unnerving. It moves quickly, though, and once the monster’s out of the ice, there’s a lot of running, hiding and blasting things with flamethrowers. Winstead is a fine replacement for Kurt Russell’s character in the 1982 film. Because she’s one of only two women in the camp, and the only person who knows the alien’s tricks, she has to be fierce and unrelenting just to get by, and Winstead does it well.

The rest of the cast is an interchangeable lineup of bearded Norwegian guys in thick sweaters, along with Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Joel Edgerton as the helicopter pilots who just want to get back to civilization as soon as possible. Carpenter’s film wasn’t a titanic work of character development, but each character at least had an individual personality. Here, it’s difficult to tell who’s who, and when one bearded-and-sweatered Norwegian falls, there’s another to take his place.

It doesn’t help that Carpenter’s version of the film pretty explicitly spelled out what happened to the Norwegian crew. The details of Heijningen take are different, but the high points are the same. It’s impossible to evaluate the 2011 “The Thing” in a vacuum—it cribs so thoroughly and so well from the 1982 film that it couldn’t exist without its predecessor. Although the visual effects in the latest “The Thing” are CGI body-horror gross-outs, well-made and disturbing, they’re also close copies of the groundbreaking practical effects work that Rob Bottin pulled off in the original film. The only thing separating the 2011 film from the original is the climax, a big-budget romp through—what else—the alien’s massive, generic-looking ship.

And so, because the 1982 “The Thing” is such a solid, finely-tuned work of sci-fi paranoia and alien horror, the 2011 “The Thing” is also a good flick. But that’s also what prevents it from being great, at least for anyone familiar with the original. Those who haven’t seen Carpenter’s version will have a grand, scary time. Each generation gets “The Thing” it deserves, and this time around, we’re stuck with a well-done facsimile. It could’ve been worse—or, even better, it could’ve been original.