Antarctica is a great setting for a horror movie. You’re in the most remote, desolate, deadly corner of the planet, where the weather can change moods at the drop of a hat, where you can freeze to death before you know it, and where if something goes wrong you’re just screwed, simple as that. When you see footage of the barren, wind swept landscape it’s easy to imagine why Lovecraft set “At the Mountains of Madness” in such a spot, it’s like an entire continent trying to drive you crazy and murder every living thing besides penguins. It is a landscape rife with an inherent tension, a tension that is largely underused by “The Thing”, director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s new prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 film, oddly enough, also called “The Thing”.
