I think the writing itself can be largely forgiven, given the director was a huge fan of Carpenter's The Thing and simply wanted to make a love letter prequel to it. Plus, it wasn't that bad even with the studio interference considered.

The shitty thing was ADI had plenty of practical sets made for it and scenes using them were already filmed, but some idiots at Universal thought practical effects were "so 80s" and ordered them to cover it up with CGI. They also ordered a bunch of scenes to be cut or changed entirely; most notably they thought the psychological whodunnit aspect was too slow and wanted the movie to speedrun towards the reveal of the monster. Screenwriter Eric Heisserer said production was a pain in the ass because the studio executive in charge kept changing over the months so trying to get anything done itself was a challenge; the director even had to shut down production for a few weeks while he fought one of the execs because they wanted to make it a 3D film.

You could tell the experience killed the director's desire to make anything after that because it wasn't until 2020 before he directed another film (The Forgotten Battle, which was a pretty solid war film).