The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter's 1982 The Thing is an...interesting movie. I'm not even quite sure how I feel after watching it. Disturbed? A bit. Grossed out? Hell yes. Mad props to effects, costumes, what ever else

Nightmares.

went into making those creatures look like disgusting, drippy, bits of alien hell because I'm making a sour face just thinking about those gelatinous-covered foreign bodies of grossness. Ick!

Aside from the "ew" factor, I did like this movie and it's worth a watch, but I'm not sure if I'll ever leisurely decide to say "Hey, I feel like watching The Thing again today." I think something that lost the appeal for me was how this movie is entirely a team of men. It was a bit disappointing to see after watching Alien where Ripley not only survives, but saves the day. So yes, that was a bit irksome, but nothing I can do but continue on with the movie, so continue I did. Otherwise, the actors themselves were great and were probably the strongest factor that drove me into the movie.

The isolation of the events happening in Antarctica was great, since isolation is something that comes up so much in horror movies and written works. In Alien we were stranded on the spaceship with out crew, and this time around it is on a base camp on a cold, abandoned continent. However, we soon discover there seems to be an apparent connection between Antarctica and space when the crew discovers the huge

spaceship hidden beneath the 100,000 year old ice.

Besides isolation, this movie provides fear through the often used idea of something spreading, like a disease or pandemic, but this one is through a terrifying organism that can somehow replicate the cells of something to the point where it will eventually be a perfect replica. It was interesting to see the creature start with the dog. I've heard (spoiler alert?) that the prequel sets up the dog thing, so I'll definitely have to check that out sometime. There's something very disturbing about seeing an innocent dog take on an eerie gaze (kudos to the trainers), and end up bursting into an alien. It's always the innocent ones...We then see the creature elevate to replicating the crew members and eventually working its way up to the doctor, which made me wonder if it was working its way up through some kind of rank or intelligence?

Fuck yeah, Kurt Russell!

The ending presents ambiguity as we see Mac and Childs as the only survivors of the final, fiery fight against the creature. I was really waiting for Mac to end up being the creature all along or even cooler, if he'd been the creature but adapted so well he'd forgotten he wasn't human. That would have been awesome. A little more closure at the end would have been nice, but it's still fine the way it is, especially since it takes us back to the idea of the unknown. We don't know for sure if either of those guys is possessed by that thing. Childs disappeared and we never saw Mac give the blood test to himself. *cue dramatic music because the music from the movie was awesome*