Movie Review - John Carpenter's The Thing

John Carpenter's The Thing

John Carpenter's The Thing is actually a remake of an old 50s movie The Thing From Another World. Of course, Carpenter's film barely resembles that predecessor, but it's worth noting. Instead, The Thing  takes a more gruesome turn that harbors some intended distrust of the characters. 

Kurt Russell stars as rugged R.J. MacReady, a bearder, shaggy-haired man working on a scientific expedition in Antarctica. When we tune in to their situation, a Norwegian sled dog has escaped from its ransacked camp and two Norwegians have come hunting it down via helicopter. It crashes, and MacReady goes to see what's up at their camp to have them in such a stir over a dog. Turns out some weird stuff was happening there, including a discovery in the snow. Soon, the crew over at MacReady's camp finds out the secret - the dog is actually an alien life form that can replicate its cells to change shape. As the team struggles to understand the being, the thing keeps cloning, causing discontent within the camp as no one can trust the person they see.

Carpenter's direction is a perfect example of how very little characterization can be effective in a horror film - rather than fall flat because of its lack of interesting characters, The Thing thrives off of this by presenting situations where the audience does not know who to trust. We are given just enough qualities of each character to distinguish one from the other, but they also stay fairly mysterious. The only character who we have much contact with is MacReady, but his drinking problem and later suspicious actions are cause for the audience's turning on him. This makes for great cinema because it's so hard to guess who the thing is. One can attribute some of the intensity of the film to the actions of the characters as well. With their growing confusion and sense of hopelessness in the face of the thing, they begin to physically turn on each other, emphasizing the survival instinct of the human being and the spread of distrust among individuals. 

There's a change in this film from external monsters to the internal that is a more chilling experience; rather than seeing the terror walking around in the open, which acts as a more blatant, obvious scare, the thing uses relative normalcy to produce the shock of chaos. It's more interesting, more gripping, and completely unexpected. A scene where MacReady is burning the blood of each crew member to unearth which one is the thing is a prime instance of this; even if the audience does know that something is going to happen, it's hard to predict exactly what or when, so the viewer is always on his or her toes.

The graphic alien life form is done so well that it's easy to forget the really lame UFO sequence at the beginning of the film. The thing changes shape in undulations and spasms and the special effects are amazing. The changes from human to animal are quite surprising and are significantly distant from scenes like the chestburster from Alien. Instead, the disintegration of the human body seems painful, even though it's not a real person. This is especially apparent in the scene where the head of one of the crew members, Norris (Charles Hallahan) tries to crawl away; the disgusting feeling that the alien can never be stripped of all of its pieces is frightening and produces paranoia even in the viewer.

While the ending leaves it open to interpretation whether the thing is still alive, it's almost not satisfactory. The pride that the viewer feels for the crew's sense of duty in stopping the life form, even if it means a suicide mission, is cancelled out by the conclusion of the film when MacReady and another crew member, Childs (Keith David), survive. It seems best to quarantine themselves rather than risk infecting the entire planet, and there's just something to be desired from the ending.

The isolation of the crew is key to the film, and there's a sense of claustrophobia that adds to the "bottled-up" dread of the camp. It's hard not to be affected in some way by the distrust running rampant, and the psychological weight of the film sticks to the viewer like glue. It may be over 20 years old, but The Thing is still very relevant as a horror film that turns the audience against its characters - with no one to trust, there's also no lifeline to hold onto, mimicking how MacReady feels as he struggles to deduce who the thing is before it escapes into the population. We want to trust him, even if we can't, and this is the power that the film holds over us through most of the movie.

John Carpenter's The Thing on Rotten Tomatoes