A lot of famous horror movies have vague titles, The Omen, Scream, Halloween, Psycho, but The Thing probably takes the cake.
As horror movies tend to celebrate or analyze “otherness,” what’s more frightening than something you can’t even really describe? It hunts humans, yet it also lives among them. They were right to use flame throwers!
The Thing follows an American research station in Antartica. In the first scene, an Alaskan malamute runs into the camp, being followed by a distressed Norwegian with a gun. As Americans are wont to do, they shoot the Norwegian in the face.
But this dog did not come to make friends. It soon becomes apparent that it isn’t really a dog at all.
Poor dog. Just before, a couple of the Americans went over to the Norwegian side of Antartica and found their camp destroyed and the burnt remains of creature lying in the snow. What would you do? Take it back to your own camp of course!
The Thing makes an insane use of practical effects as this unexplained life form shows off its ability to devour and then transform into any of its victims. The film soon becomes an exploration of paranoia. Anyone could be the Thing. The impending darkness that is an Antarctic winter highlights the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in a building with an intelligent, carnivorous creature. It’s part Alien (1979), part Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
One of the only comic relief moments is when the head of one of their buddies turns into a giant spider and tries to sneak out of the room unnoticed.
Kurt Russell as the helicopter pilot, MacReady, acts as our pillar of logic in this terrifying adventure. We trust him so much, that I really think the movie missed an opportunity by not having him be The Thing in the end. Although… it is ambiguous… oh my god maybe he was The Thing!
In this scene, he holds a flare to a dynamite because all of the others are convinced that he is the Thing. But they later prove who is and who isn’t with an intense blood test, and at least up until that moment, we can be sure he isn’t.
No one wants to be tied up next to the Thing.
But Kurt Russell is weirdly attractive here as our scotch-drinking hero. He just looks sensitive with that beard.
The Thing was released the exact same day as Blade Runner in 1982, and debuted #8 at the box office. Thanks to a cult following and a re-evaluation from critics, it is now considered a classic horror film, and is currently ranked at #168 on the IMDb Top 250. The director, John Carpenter, is also famous for launching the Halloween franchise in 1978.
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