The Thing (1982)

Rated R for being one of the most visually upsetting horror movies that I have ever seen.  It's a movie's whose creature effects are so successful that this might be the closest thing to a timeless special effects film.  There's a lot of gore and death.  There's discussions of suicide.  There's language and drinking.  Honestly, it's the ultimate horror movie.  It absolutely needs to be rated R.

DIRECTOR:  John Carpenter

I have very little time to write this.  I'm being stay-at-home Dad this weekend as my wife and oldest daughter are off in Boston having the time of their lives.  Don't worry about me.  I'm milking every second of laziness out of this weekend.  It's been fun productive.  I'll say that.  But we're leaving for church in about thirteen minutes and I realize that I have at least thirteen minutes to set up this blog to finish later.

I've seen this movie before.  Oh, I've seen this movie before.  I've seen the original black-and-white The Thing from Outer Space before that.  I've seen the 2011 sequel with the same name.  I'll go as far as to say that I'm a huge fan of this movie.  Like, it might be the best horror movie ever made.  And I've only seen it once before.  Yeah, I've been nervous about revisiting this one.  The reason that I've only seen this once is that it was a nearly perfect experience.  The Thing by John Carpenter might be one of the most upsetting horror films ever and I needed this movie to be perfect.  Honestly, a movie hits a certain quality and I'm afraid to make it a casual viewing.  Before I did this blog, I did the same thing with Seven Samurai.  I knew that it was genius.  I was just afraid to come back to it.  While I completely lost it on how well Seven Samurai held up, I don't know if it holds a candle to how well The Thing held up.  Seven Samurai will still be a more important movie to me.  But The Thing as a rewatch was as haunting as the first time that I watched it.

There were moments in  the beginning of the film where I was skeptical that it was as good as I remembered.  John Carpenter is a bit of a goober with some of his direction.  The man is an undeniable genius, but few directors date themselves as hard as Carpenter does.  His movies look like the eras in which they were made, mainly because Carpenter loves the trappings of his era.  With the case of The Thing, Carpenter completely embraced 1980s computer technology with a vengeance.  I can't throw stones at him.  After all, the Star Trek movies with the original cast did the same thing.  And before the threat shows up, Carpenter is always just a little too obsessed with making his characters cool and relatable, thus making them look insanely out of touch.  Nauls's taste in music being rebellious is adorable by today's standards Still, that's my only even slight complaint.  It isn't even a complaint.  If anything, I love how quaint some of those choices are in retrospect.  But if I tried showing this movie to a high schooler today, there might be a few too many giggles before the movie gets completely unhinged.

I do hate the fact that The Thing might not get respect in 2025 because it is the foundation for Among Us.  Okay, the trope of a monster among us (see?  It's back!) is something that we've gotten since the Golden Age of science fiction with Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  But I never find those movies all that scary.  Upsetting at times?  Absolutely.  Especially when it came to the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, there are things that are haunting.  But truly scary?  Nothing hit as truly scary as The Thing.  While I tend to fall back on The Descent as the scariest movie I've ever seen (another one and afraid to revisit movie!), The Thing might win until I give The Descent another watch.  The reason that I think it might be the scariest movie ever made is that, oddly enough, it's the anti-Jaws.

Jaws is an incredible movie.  It's a movie I've actually seen a lot of times.  My major argument about how Jaws works as a horror movie i under the concept that nothing is as scary as our imaginations.  We rarely see the shark and that's something that I can't take away from the movie.  But that argument might not be completely accurate given The Thing as a counter-argument.  While there are more and less effective moments in the film when it comes to creature effects, I think it all hits on some scale.  We are allowed to see this creature often and in all of its myriad iterations and they're all completely terrifying.  Well, I think I can firmly say that the creature designs in The Thing are actually more horrifying than I can imagine.  I think of all of the video games that have basically stolen the design of the creature from The Thing and how none of them are nearly as effective as what I see in this movie.  Like, I was thinking of how boring the creature designs were in Resident Evil 6, but they were knock-offs of absolutely incredible effects from this movie.

I stand by a theory of mine that isn't the most complimentary.  John Carpenter was a director who could not miss until he became a director who could not hit.  I'm really sorry because I respect the man tremendously and I hate saying rude things like what I just wrote.  But this might be Carpenter at his best.  I mean, I'm always going to hold Halloween in my heart as my quintessential Carpenter film.  But The Thing might just be a smarter film.  I know.  I'm pointing out the genius of the Secret Werewolf formula.  I think we've all crossed this bridge when watching stories like this.  But The Thing is both a lifting up and a tearing down of what it means to be human.  A lot of the movie shows the worst of people.  In terms of allegory, I don't see a lot of "fear of communism" that we get with Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  I don't know how the movie manages to avoid that comparison considering that the formula is borderline the same.  But it does say that we don't know who to trust in society and we'll do anything that we need to in order to survive.  For the majority of the film, we realize that these men, who mostly get along starting from moment one, are borderline itching to kill one another and this monster gives them the excuse.  It's odd that people are cool with MacReady being the leader of the gang because the real MacReady would be a good leader.  MacReady was just as possible of being the monster as everyone else.  

But the film also gives humanity a pat on the back.  MacReady is kind of a selfish butt from moment one.  I mean, he's charismatic, but he's also a bit unhinged.  He's the guy who doesn't want to listen to valid concerns when they're brought to him.  We're introduced to MacReady when he pours his whiskey into a computer (that is meant to be a form of entertainment for everyone on the base in the middle of nowhere) when he loses a game of chess.  He's unhinged.  Yet, when the chips are down and Blair has disappeared, he's the one who nominates the few survivors for self-sacrifice when the end of the world is a real possibility.  Yeah, humanity doesn't come across as great for a lot of the movie.  But I'm also going to give the movie points for acknowledging that --when the chips are really down --humanity will do the right thing.  It's odd that everyone jumps on board.  I do give point to Carpenter to make the situation so dire that people would jump on board the heroic sacrifice train that MacReady suggests.  

Also, the cryptic ending?  Chef's kiss.  Oh my goodness.  Here's the deal.  I could look up whether or not MacReady or Childs is the creature.  In my head, it's MacReady.  I want the movie to end with the creature replacing MacReady because it slaps so hard as an ending.  After all, MacReady understands that everyone has to die to ensure that the creature doesn't leave the camp.  But when he survives the massive (by the way, don't say "massive" anymore.  Gen Z boys ruined that too.) explosion underground, he seems cool with Childs and he slowly freezing to death.  That's the one thing that he was trying to prevent.  And Childs is selfish enough to lie to himself that MacReady isn't the creature because he doesn't want to barbecue himself to death.  That's a pretty rad ending.  But I'll tell you what.  Me?  Unpacking that.  If I said that with any confidence, it almost weakens the film.  I love the idea that we're left kind of scratching our heads.  The movie almost ends because there is nothing else to blow up in this world, so the movie has to end. MacReady wept because there were no more bases to 'splode.

I have nothing to add about the best scene in the movie.  It's the "everyone's tied up" scene.  There's so much commentary and analysis done on this scene that I am only going to detract from the discourse.  It's so good.

Honestly, this movie is incredible.  It might be the best horror movie ever made and I might have to dethrone John Carpenter's other great movie.  It's earnestly very scary and I was even prepped for it.  Such a good watch.