Palaeontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) joins a Norwegian scientific team in Antarctica that has discovered an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, and an organism that seems to have died in the crash. When an experiment frees the alien, a shape-shifting creature with the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being, Kate must join the crews pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. Paranoia soon spreads like an epidemic as theyre infected, one by one, and a thrilling race for survival begins

The Thing is a prelude to John Carpenters classic 1982 film of the same name.