The Thing (1982)

directed by John Carpenter

USA

109 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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Note: This is an old review that I've dug up from my archives and reworked for quality. I am extremely busy this month, and did not have time to write anything new. My apologies.

Not even considering its massive cultural impact, The Thing is one of my favorite movies. I think it's also objectively one of the best horror movies ever made, with one of the most interesting and well-executed concepts for a monster. Even though that concept is not original, having been adapted from another film that was itself adapted from a book, it's done so uniquely in this iteration that it stands out from its predecessors.

The first time I watched this was when I was only just getting into movies, and I wasn't "good at" watching them. Stuff just didn't occur to me; I would miss huge parts of the plot because I wasn't paying attention to anything. I don't know if it's because of that or just because it's been a while since I saw it, but so much in The Thing jumped out at me that didn't the first time. The film's opening scene follows a dog across the frozen white Antarctic landscape as a helicopter tries desperately to track and shoot it, for reasons as yet unknown to us viewers. The Norwegians' desperate attempts to kill the dog and warn the U.S. base - attempts that fail, but may have been in vain anyway - are the frontispiece to what will become a building of dread that never stops throughout the whole movie. 

It really struck me upon this rewatch that this movie is just that: dreadful. It has an ominousness to it that maybe can only be understood when you've seen it and you know what's coming, which might seem counterintuitive given the anticipatory nature of dread, but watching capable people encounter an entity that they don't (and can't) understand gives off such a strong feeling of wrongness that it fills the whole atmosphere with foreboding.

I also did not know how to appreciate practical effects the first time I saw this. I didn't recognize that besides the very obvious fact that the effects in this are some of the best ever put to film, they're also used to perfection, at the perfect times; enough is shown that we feel like the alien - or, technically, the organisms the alien possesses and attempts to imitate - is flesh, a real creature. I can't really say that it doesn't tip over the line into being excessive, because the whole thing is an excess of blood and guts; entrails whipping around to find purchase; dragging itself along by its organs; body parts sprouting new, horrible limbs never glimpsed by any Earthly creature. But it's one of the only times where such a liberal application of grossery is needed, where it's used as real, genuine horror instead of a cheap attempt to shock.

I want to talk about the alien. I could talk about it all day and all night if I was given the chance. Because like I said, this is one of the most enduringly frightening concepts in horror that I've ever had the pleasure of giving space in my brain to. It is something that has no physical body itself or has a physical body that can be discarded at will, something that exists as a possessing spirit. It is an organism that is only concerned with survival, and it has the ability to alter its body plan in the blink of an eye to do whatever it can do evade injury and continue its goal of infecting as many life forms as possible. There is something so uncanny about the concept of a being that can just sprout new appendages if needed; it doesn't have to conform to evolution's idea of an ideal body plan honed over millions of years because it can reach out a coil of intestine as a grasping limb or grow a new mouth full of teeth on whatever spot its body needs one. And all of this is depicted with what I'm calling accuracy - it may be a misnomer considering that such a creature (thankfully) does not exist and so there isn't a way to depict it "accurately", but the practical effects team created what felt like a true-to-life depiction of the concept.

That scene where one of the infected men tries to run from the others but is found half-mutated, his hands horrifically misshapen and a blank alien look in his eyes. The noise he makes. That's fodder for a thousand nightmares. I can see how that single scene echoes in my favorite horror film of all time, Banshee Chapter.

I could go on even longer about this movie - how Jed the dog is one of the best canine actors of all time, managing to convey not the obvious immediate threat that an angry dog would, but cunning. Malice. Granted, a lot of that is more a credit to good editing than the dog himself, but I want to point out another specific scene, and then I'll close this review: Towards the beginning, when Nauls is told to turn down his Stevie Wonder, refuses, and then the camera explores empty corridors with the sounds of "Superstition" playing muffled in the background, we see the husky silently slip his nose in the door. He silently pads down the hallway until he finds a room with a human, and enters, as the human's shadow on the wall turns toward him, and then the scene cuts. I felt like I was watching a predator. Not just a dog, but something else. I think maybe it's the segue from light humor to a vision of dread that does it. That you can still hear humanity in the background while you watch the beginning of its downfall on four legs. That scene and every other in this film is why it's one of my favorite horror movies.