Did we need a prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing? Probably not, what with Carpenter replaced by Dutch commercial director Matthijs van Heijningen. But Thing cultists won't care. Carpenter's version hinted at a Norwegian research team that found something alien buried in the ice in Antarctica. Here they are. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays a Columbia prof who joins up. Joel Edgerton is a chopper pilot who becomes her ally as the Thing invades bodies and pretends to be human until it breaks out in gory splendor. That's it. One gut-busting death after another, terror giving way to tedium. Your call.

Related
• Video: Bad Eighties Remakes Hit Theaters
• Video: September's Worst Movies Get Tossed in the Scum Bucket
• Peter Travers' Fall Movie Preview

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.