The opening is quite good actually, but the joke that they make sucks. It doesn't contribute in any way it's just kind of uncomfortable to listen to.
It's disappointing to see what could have been with the practical effects at the start with the big thing she's looking at when she meets the doctor the first time.
The movie doesn't waste any time, within the first 15 minutes you're already introduced to nearly all the characters, flown to Antarctica, going down into the cave to find the spaceship, and then leaving the cave to find the "survivor" or whatever. Crazy how quickly it happens. Then, less than like 3 minutes later, they already have the thing excavated and brought back to their base. It's crazy.
There's too many characters, and not enough time spent on any of them for me to even remotely know which one is which. Outside of a few of them none of them are really worth learning about. There's the clear main character with Kate, the antagonist with Dr Halvorsen, and maybe the suggestion of a love interest with Adam or Carter, but besides that no one is really developed at all, and it kinda feels like they're there for the express purpose of being people to die.
There's a scene on Kate's first night, she's trying to go to sleep and is up looking at the stars. The only other girl (who's name i don't even know) is like "Yeah the first night is hard" and Kate is like "I'll never look at them (the stars) the same way again.". That scene just feels so like pointless and out of place. It doesn't really do anything to help.
There's a scene after them collecting a tissue sample where they're just kind of partying and celebrating the find, that discovered an alien or whatever, and it shows you just how many people there are in this movie. It's crazy, so many people, you're only given enough time and enough introduction to care about 3 of them at the most.
There's a scene where one of the characters goes out to look at the big ice block with the thing in it, and he's looking at it, it's building a lot of suspense, then another guy comes behind him and says "BOO" and scares him. It feels like it takes away the effectiveness of any future scares kind of, and makes it feel like the movie wants to take away the power the monster might have. Also, after the guy says boo, he just kind of laughs for like a really long time and it just feels kinda weird. There's a real jumpscare after that, the thing breaks out of the ice and leaps out. While it is dissapointing that they scrapped all of the practical effects they had made, I don't ever really feel like it's that big of a deal but scenes like that kind of make it feel very hollywood, where I think it could have been done a bit better. I'm not saying Practical effects necessarily would've saved it right then, but I'd just be interested to see how it would've been done outside of that.
Henrik, and some other guy eventually find the escaped monster and it grabs Henrik and tries to absorb him. They try shooting at it before they eventually just throw a bunch of gasoline at it and burn it to death. And just like that in about 30 minutes we have our first death, and the tension drops dramatically, instead of kind of staying very consistent like it does in the original film. Also, this scientist guy is so so so evil., it's like comical.
We open up the thing that they killed with Henrik inside of it and they cut it up to find Henrik's body either being absorbed or created again, it does suggest that the one we see is the duplicated one that it creates because Mary Elizabeth Winstead says that the tissue "almost looks new". I don't think we ever for sure find out which one it is.
One thing that I do like is that in doing the autopsy, Kate finds a titanium plate that was used to set a broken arm, and that helps lead to her discovery that it cannot mimic inorganic matter. They find it and for a bit are just kind of like "okay what? why is this outside of his arm?" Which I think also helps prove that the Henrik they're examining is the new mimicked one and not the original.
We then see a scene through a microscope of the still Living alien and Henrik cells imitating his cells. It's kind of cool that we get to see them learn that but it just feels kind of off that that's the first thing they do. Also, the animation that happens right there is just kind of poorly done, looks kinda cringe I can't lie.
After that, Kate finds some dental fillings, and a shower that is full of blood, which makes her think that someone else was assimilated. I kind of like this, and it also kinda finalizes her theory of them not being able to mimic inorganic material, but to me it feels as though it was done too quickly after we first find the titanium plate. The movie's pacing is just kind of off. This leads her to think that someone on the helicopter is a thing, and also by the way there's a helicopter taking off that has Olav, the guy that was with Henrik when he died, being taken back to go to a hospital since he's so shaken up and kind of destroyed by the horrific things he witnessed. Then it's revealed that one of the guys on there is a thing, I don't know his name though. The helicopter crashes when they're trying to land it after Kate attempting to flag it down. It is assumed that all 4 people on the helicopter were killed in the crash.
After Kate discovers the shower to be mysteriously cleaned up all by themselves, she shares her suspicious with everyone, that the thing can mimic other people. She tries to get everyone to stay to keep it everything safe. Everyone kind of freaks out, the doctor is like "we should discuss this in private". She shares that it can copy people but nothing inorganic and that the blood was cleaned up, meaning that someone isn't human or whatever. They all separate and kind of write her off, but Juliette, (the only other girl) stays and shares some things she's noticed. Kate trusts her and they go to get all the keys to the vehicles, Juliette reveals herself to be an alien. Kate was far too quick to trust, and makes stupid decisions. In the original movie one of my favorite parts is that it doesn't feel like anybody is being very very stupid like it does in plenty of other horror movies. This movie does not share that. Sometimes the characters are very stupid. Juliette kills some other guy, his name is karl I think, and Kate escapes. Kate finds everyone else that hasn't tried to leave, and they burn Julilette, then taking their bodies to the snow, dousing them in gasoline, and torching both their bodies in an attempt to destroy them. At this point we're about halfway through the movie.
Something I find annoying that happens multiple times, at least three times that I can think of, is other characters saying some stuff like "Kate? kate. KAte! KATE! kate. Kate??" Just like over and over again.
They make a plan to take blood samples from everyone just like in the original, Adam and the evil doctor make a plan to do that, and Lars and Kate go around to destroy all the vehicles. I think this is very stupid because mere moments ago Kate was talking about how they cannot isolate themselves alone with anybody. Kate then also follows lars, who tells her to follow him, and she just stupidly does that after what happened between her and Juliette. Although Lars doesn't do anything dangerous and actually just shows her some grenades that could be useful and are useful at the end of the movie, and everything turns out fine, I still can't believe that she did that.
Carter and the copilot of the helicopter make their way all the way back to the base after crashing the helicopter. Everybody is reasonably suspicious because it was a freaking helicopter crash. They try to burn them and Kate is all like "No don't do it we'll just take them in and keep them trapped until we can do the blood test", which I guess is reasonable, and carter still has an earring which means that he is human, this is not stated out loud until the end of the movie but is pretty easy to pick up as a viewer, which I actually really like.
Peder(?) and Kate return from the other building where they are keeping the pilots, or "the americans" as they call them, and find the area where the blood test was being prepared completely on fire. It's burned down and everything is ruined. Adam and the doctor were preparing it, the doctor left for a bit and came back to find it ruined which makes Adam the one that is the most suspicious, I don't know if we can actually know who did it, if they left the proper clues or anything, because it kind of just comes out of nowhere and I honestly don't care enough to figure it out. There's no obvious clues like the way that Windows drops the keys in the original.
Kate proposes that they examine everyone to see if they have dental fillings, since the thing had to spit them out since they couldn't be copied. This is their version of the blood test scene from the original. I heard in a directors commentary that the0y intentionally made a decision to have this scene go nowhere, without it leading to a jumpscare or any learned information really to act as a way to "subvert expectations". To me it just feels like failed, boring fanservice, because this is a pretty long scene. It shows you the inside of everyone's mouth except for Adam, who we assume has no fillings, he claims he flosses. The doctor is separated, he says some sciency doctor BS like "You know as well as I do there's too many variables, they're porcelain", and stuff like that. So their fillings are invisible. Some other guy opens his mouth, we see that his teeth have no visible fillings, and with him, adam, and some fourth guy that I also don't know the name of, we have our four guys that get separated from the rest.
A couple guys, Jonas and Lars, are sent to retrieve the americans so they can be examined too. They discover a hole in the floor, they dug their way out much like blair in the original. Lars is presumably caught and captured by them while he goes back out to try and find them and is presumed dead, however he's actually the last one to make it, it's a confusing scene I can't lie. Very low visibility and very quickly.
The americans smash a window to get back inside, peder is shot in the head and killed. It feels like it's supposed to be their version of Clark's death in the original. From this point forward, the movie goes very down hill in my opinion.
Edvard is one of the 4 people that were separated during the fillings scene. He's the head of the research base, and he is one of the things. He doesn't even open his mouth, he just walks over without a word, saying nothing but "she's a clever girl" afterwards. He's knocked down in an explosion, and is carried into the rec room where everybody gathers together. His arm falls off and becomes an arm thing, and from this point forward the monster is on screen for most of the movie, there's roughly 30 minutes left. Carter attempts to burn Edvard's body but his flamethrower malfunctions or whatever, which leads to the death of nearly every remining character, including the black guy who's name I do not know but he's the "american" or pilot that's not carter, adam, and all the other people without names that we don't care about. Edvard and Adam kind of fuse together to make the Split Face thing, which will later be discovered by macready and copper in the orignal movie.
Sander (the evil doctor guy) is absorbed and killed, and we follow Carter and Kate as they explore looking for the monster so they ca finally kill it and get this over with. There's also another random guy that it shows for a bit, I don't know his name or where he came from. This other guy is shown later during the credits of the movie as the one that slit his own throat and is found in the chair during the original film, but this isn't shown happening on camera, just the aftermath in the credits. This ending bit feels like it's mostly just setup for putting things where we find them when they go to this base and look around in the original film, which is kind of cool fanservice, but it also feels like they were just kind of shoehorned in and like they were inserted into some existing planned scenes instead of the scene being built around it if that makes sense. They kill splitface, Sander gets into one of the snow cars and drives away, so Kate and Carter follow them. This confuses me because I thought they like destroyed the vehicles earlier, but I guess not.
Now this is where it gets to be really crazy. Kate grabs some of the grenades she was shown by Lars earlier, and they follow Sander to the Alien Space ship from the beginning of the movie. THE ALIEN SPACE SHIP. the last 15-20 minutes of this movie are on a space ship. Goodness. Some part of it starts to like split open, and Kate follows so far that we hear her scream fade away and don't even hear her hit the ground, and she somehow survives this. Carter goes down into the spaceship to attempt to find and kill Sander or just escape, Kate wakes up from her enormous fall completely unharmed and attempts to do the same thing. The spaceship's design is crazy, there's some weird thing on it that looks like a design straight out of minecraft, and we see the Sander Thing and it just looks like this
That's kind of what upsets me about the end of this movie, it never goes back to the spooky like "who's human and who's not" kind of thing again, the monster remains a monster the whole rest of the time.. It really frustrates me I don't know why. We would obviously know that sander is a thing but I don't think that means it has to stay in it's horrendous monster form the whole time, I feel like that makes it far less scary.
Kate throws a grenade into the mouth of the alien, it explodes into a million pieces and dies. She and Carter leave the spaceship to get back into their funny snow car and drive away. Kate notices Carter's earring is missing and torches him.
The credits start to roll, but they cut in and out between a scene of a guy landing his helicopter at the Norwegian base, his name is Matias but I'm not sure if we've ever met him before. Lars is there and there's a dog running away, he talks to matias and is like "start the helicopter that's no dog", and these are the two people chasing the dog that we start the original movie with. The final credits roll, and the movie is over.