In the deep cold of an Alaskan oil drilling facility, Ottway (Liam Neeson) works as a sharpshooter and camp protector, sniping wolves before they get too close (and consume the oil workers). These workers are the scum of the earth – brawling, drunken ex-cons who get their kicks from fucking whale sized, 53-year-old Eskimo hookers (apparently) – but, you know, they’re okay really. Kind of.

Ottway and a small collection of oil drillers board a plane back to the mainland, thoughts full of family and warmth and middle-aged Eskimo whores. But the plane crashes. Into the snow. In the middle of freakin’ nowhere.

Ottway and seven other survivors find themselves facing a terrible reality; they have no food, no shelter, killer weather and no chance of rescue. And then a pack of wolves turn up! Vicious, psychotic CGI monsters hell-bent on killing the beardy human scum that crash-landed into their territory.

The Grey then becomes a run-fight-hide scenario, not necessarily in that order. Not willing to “do an Alive” and chow down on dead man butt-cheek, the dwindling group of survivors trek South, either away from the wolves or deeper into their territory…

Coming from the writer of the underrated Death Sentence (Ian Mackenzie Jeffers) and A Team director Joe Carnahan, The Grey is certainly well scripted and directed. The first thirty minutes are certainly a compelling watch – the plane crash is superb – with more character work in half an hour than you’d normally find in 100 minutes of your average action flick.

In places The Grey is also terrifying (hence it’s appearance on Gorepress). The plane crash is superbly done and genuinely horrific; loud, panicked-filled, confusing and brutal. Then there’s the scenes at night – deep in the forest or exposed on the Alaskan tundra – which are haunting and nerve-jangling, with the sound of howling beasts lurking somewhere in the inky black. The wolves are brutal, attack at the worst moments and really provide a great threat. Scary as hell… until it the sun comes up.

The problem with The Grey is the latter half. Once Ottway and “friends” leave the wreckage of the plane behind and survive a night in the woods, the film becomes very generic and – although exciting – a little tiresome. In places it reminded me strongly of Ravenous (another seriously underrated film), The Edge and Alive, with cliff jumping, branch twatting and in-fighting abound. Nothing really surprises here.

Neeson is excellent as always and utterly believable as Ottway throughout. Originally the role was offered to Bradley Cooper, which would’ve simply been awful on nearly all levels. Luckily we’re given a cast full of mature, believable performers who all do well in their given roles. At times they can appear a little clichéd, but they all feel like multi-layered people and not just stock archetypes, which is testament to them and the Jeffers-Carnahan team.

If you love Liam Neeson’s recent foray into the world of bloody action flicks then this sits somewhere between the brutal awesomeness of Taken and the predictable nonsense of Unknown. The Grey is certain to divide audiences.

You might love it, you might absolutely hate it – I’m stuck somewhere in the middle, having enjoyed it but finding myself desperately wanting more. Overall The Grey is worth the watch. Just.

Oh, and DO NOT WATCH THE TRAILER. If I could find the person responsible for taking the film’s FINAL FUCKING SCENE and slapping it into the trailer, I would throw them into a pit full of glass, salt and CGI wolves. Absolute fucking idiots. It’s worse than the spoilerific trailer for The Crazies, and that says something. So I reiterate – DO NOT WATCH THE TRAILER.

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

Internet entrepreneurs Sean (Emile Hirsch) and Ben (Max Minghella) are having a tough time in Moscow. Their sensational website idea has been brutally nicked by clichéd slimy guy Skyler (Joel Kinnaman) and their dreams instantly shattered. The solution? Get drunk!

The American duo head into a Russian club and bump into Natalie (Olivia Thirlby) and Anne (Rachael Taylor), another couple of statesiders kicking back in Russia. Naturally Skyler is there too – as Moscow is a very small place, obviously – and their evening goes from sad to horrendous when… ALIENS ATTACK!

This is not Skyline, despite the following description: weird lights suddenly come down from the sky and foolishly curious civilians get sucked up and obliterated by invisible aliens. This is not Skyline, this is The Darkest Hour, and it’s different because of two things:

1.) It’s set in Russia

2.) It’s not entirely without merit

Where Skyline failed was in character & purpose (a group of absolute wankers hide in building. Credits roll) and although The Darkest Hour doesn’t exactly excel in these things, it just felt less arrogant and hateful.

The Darkest Hour focuses on our lost Americans, stuck in a country they don’t understand, being hunted by things they cannot see. It’s a compelling idea but also very disconnected. The plot is basically this: go from Point A to Point B, do something, move from Point B to Point C, do something else, go from Point C to Point D etc… etc… and it quickly becomes tiresome.

How are the aliens? Well, at first they’re amazing; wisps of energy, lighting up anything electrical nearby, literally obliterating anything organic by touch. They’re incredibly dangerous, although a little purposeless and meandering. Mid-way into The Darkest Hour we discover there is something more to these extraterrestrials and it’s… disappointing (to say the least). The aliens are laughably bad and simply ridiculous. Seriously, someone explain them to me. Please. I mean, really? What’re they made of? Coal?

Is it well acted? Yes and no. Despite being an exceptional actor (see Into the Wild or Alpha Dog) Emile Hirsch merely happens in this movie, nothing more. He simply isn’t compelling. It is only when they join with some Russians (way into the film) that The Darkest Hour becomes genuinely interesting.

Veronika Ozerova is probably the best thing in The Darkest Hour, as Russian teenager Vika. Without a single film credit to her name, Ozerova out-acts the majority of the cast, who wring out every single scene with cloying sentimentality and false bravado. If the film had focused on Vika instead of a group of lost Americans, it would’ve been a lot sharper.

The main surprise is finding out who the creators of The Darkest Hour are. The direction is so rudimentary and the script so epically po-faced I had expected the credits to land in the laps of someone like Nelson McCormack or J.S. Cardone. But this is directed by Chris Gorak, the man behind the superbly slow-burning dirty-bomb thriller Right at Your Door, and scriptwriter Jon Spaihts who – perhaps worryingly – has co-written the Alien-prequel Prometheus! Their work here is not diabolical; it’s just mediocre and unoriginal.

Overall The Darkest Hour is entertaining, silly, awkward and ambling. There are moments of genius and it peaks with the introduction of the Russian characters, yet for all its build up and thrills this is a soulless alien-invasion flick with some awfully absurd aliens. The Darkest Hour is good fun and totally ridiculous, but sadly forgettable.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10 stars

So… a prequel.

Here’s the shocker – it’s not terrible. It’s far from awesome, but it’s not the abysmal hunk of aggravated turd I had expected it to be.

Set a few days before Kurt Russell killed his chess computer (with whisky) this story is an origins one, not for The Thing itself, but for the Norwegian camp briefly seen in the original.

Three Norwegians hunting a lone distress signal somewhere in Antarctica are surprised when they fall into a glacial ravine… and find a crashed spacecraft. The first thing they do is call for all-American girl and super-biologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to help out the gruff and beardy Norwegians.

Within minutes of her arrival they take her to a second discovery – the corpse of the spacecraft’s pilot. Digging up the weird beasty, they take the ice-encased monster to their lab… and then have a party. Needless to say the “thing” in the ice isn’t quite as dead as the scientists thought and soon it’s loose, squiggly and really huggy.

For those who haven’t seen John Carpenter’s The Thing I won’t spoil the surprise, but this alien being isn’t just a mass of wibbly bits and claws… it’s the ultimate predator on an extinction level scale.

What’s right with The Thing 2011? Well it sticks closely to the original, ensuring Thing obsessives like myself can tick off the references (although some things are missing / just plain fucking wrong).

Marco Beltrami’s score is very evocative, mainly because it steals liberally from / lovingly homages Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack from the original. The cast also do a reasonable job, although none of them have anywhere near the charm of Kurt Russell and Keith David.

Also, surprisingly, The Thing 2011 is genuinely tense at times, scary as hell at others and – in places – actually very sickening. A detached hand inserting itself into someone’s mouth will always be horrible, even if it is CGI…

Ah yes. The CGI. Time for the negatives!

The original was brilliant for a number of reasons, but a major one was Rob Bottin (and friends)’s special effects. Lacking decent CGI meant actual craft went into making physical monsters that moved, crawled, attacked, whipped, wiggled and caught fire. It was believable and more disturbing because of this. The effects work is still superb today, standing the test of time where so many others have failed.

I remember the creators of The Thing 2011 emphasizing how important the practical effects were and that they’d used them liberally, but the only time they actually applied them was on the corpses, lying about on the floor or workbenches. Considering the woeful Shark Night 3D used more animatronics than The Thing 2011 does certainly say a lot about their mentality.

What the overuse of CGI meant was a lack of subtlety. The Thing was not always subtle (defibrillator scene, the dog kennel etc…) but it was never as brazen as the prequel. It was about tension, not screaming monsters exploding through ceilings.

Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s direction is far too bright and slasher-flick like, and it lacks the necessary claustrophobia needed to emulate the original’s tension and desperation.

Every other minute a man’s face would split in half or CGI tentacles would Urotsukidōji itself around the screen, slapping people with CGI blood. The prequel is the aggressive bastard child of The Thing 1982 – all noise and violence and modern technology and none of the nuanced intelligence of the original.

Unfortunately, not only are the “creatures” computer generated, the actual CGI itself is pretty dismal in places. Opting for in-yer-face violence means you see everything, and it’s pretty rubbish at times. The helicopter scene is especially bad (I actually laughed, which is never a good sign) and some of it reminded me of – dare I say it – Resident Evil: Afterlife. *shudder*

Let’s be realistic, though. It’s not all about CGI, but about character and plot too.

Tragically the characters just don’t matter. There are so many and they’re mostly fodder. This is undoubtedly the fault of screenwriter Eric Heisserer, who is responsible for writing Final Destination 5 and the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. His career appears to be the poaching of other people’s genius, and his latest is distinctly unspectacular.

Heisserer simply cannot write characters you care about. There is an absolute lack of sympathy / empathy with anyone in The Thing 2011, and this was compounded by the epilogue that plays out during the end credits, which shows the fate of two characters you’d literally forgotten about! Although a required and slyly crafted ending, it proved without a doubt that the characters we’re utterly forgettable.

Talking of endings… oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. There was one unanswered question from the original that was also unasked – “what’s INSIDE the spaceship?” Well, according to Heisserer and van Heijningen Jr., apparently the alien ship is full of cliché and confusion. Sadly this ridiculous ending is absolutely absurd and upends the tone entirely. Unnecessary and – quite frankly – fucking awful, it is infuriatingly bad.

Overall The Thing 2011 is a needless but reasonable prequel, which thankfully doesn’t 100% rape the memory of the original. It is disturbing, brutal, scary and exciting… but also confused, ugly, packed with unsympathetic characters and coated in a layer of shoddy CGI. The Thing 2011 is not as angering as I’d expected, but that’s not really a recommendation.

Conclusion: see the original.

So, is there any chance of a sequel to the prequel? Well there was mention of a “Russian base” 50 miles away, so we’ll see if the box office allows for one. Let’s bloody hope not.

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars