Of all of the films featured over the last month, "John Carpenter's The Thing" has a special place in my heart. It is not only one of the best all around films featured on the 31 Days of Terror, but just one of the best, period. It's a film that is dark, bleak, daring, unforgiving, and brilliantly written. Upon release, the film was passed off as another piece of sci-fi trash, Carpenter being called a pornographer of violence. However, "The Thing" is far from it.
The film finds a team of scientists at an American Antarctic research station who involuntarily become involved in a chase for an Alaskan malamute. The dog is being pursued by two Norwegian men who become killed in their attempts to catch the dog. R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell), the camp pilot, and Copper (Richard Dysart), the camp's doctor, head over to the Norwegian outpost to find out what happened to them. Upon discovering it, they see it is badly burned. A bizarre pseudo-human corpse lays outside. Upon further research from data at the Norwegian camp, MacReady and Norris (Charles Hallahan playing the camp's geologist), discover a flying saucer buried in the ice. Based on the Norris' estimate, the ship's been buried there for about 100,000 years. Back at the camp, the dog is kenneled along with other malamutes by Clark (Richard Masur) who is overly protective of the dogs. But upon interacting with the other animals, it transforms into a bizarre creature with tentacles, legs, and a bunch weird goo dripping from it. Blair (Wilford Brimley) performs tests and discovers that this bizarre creature is in fact eating and imitating the bodies of the life forms it consumes. The creature had been frozen in the ice for hundreds of thousands of years, only to be re-awoken by the Norwegian scientists. Now, Blair calculates that within a couple of months, should the creature get into a populated area, the entire world population would be consumed.
Kurt Russell as pilot R.J. MacReady in "John Carpenter's The Thing."
The script for the film was written by Bill Lancaster and is an adaptation of Who Goes There? a novel by John W. Campbell, Jr. Many confuse the picture to be a remake of Howard Hawkes' "The Thing From Another World", based on the same story, but the film is in fact a re-adaptation of the above mentioned novel. The script is air tight and confusing. For once, this is a good thing. The audience is never supposed to know who has been imitated and who has not. I have my own theories based on the film (to me, the shadow against the wall when the malamute is browsing the camp looks a lot like Norris). Another element of the film that was further brought out by Carpenter is its absolutely bleak view on the events happening on screen. Part of the suspense of the picture and experience viewing it was that when the characters have the drop on the creature, it never seems to work out the way I wanted it to. As the film progresses, the load on the audience becomes more and more immense as our characters have to try more and more desperately to stay alive and not be left alone with one other for they might be the thing.
Kurt Russell is stunning as MacReady. Compared to his later (and completely different) Carpenter roles, it's a marvel to watch such a talented actor on screen. His performance is always cool and calm, but never too calm. Also, I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but to me MacReady is a hair more and more on edge as the film progresses. He's obviously very level headed, being that he is the one who often has to wrangle the team together and tell everyone to calm down, but always with a sense that MacReady could snap at any moment. After a while deep into the film, my brain switched off the fact that I was watching actors on screen and I was completely absorbed into the film. Keith David is so perfect in his role that it blows my mind Carpenter that this character exists only for the purposes of this film. What I mean is that every character is rich and never feels forced or "acted." Having so many actors in one film, trapped in one place certainly makes for an interesting two hours that feel like at any time, anything can happen. Characters you expect to stay completely insane go nuts by the end of the film, people are not who they say they are, and the very humanity (literally being human) of one of the film's main characters is questioned at a point when the audience is certain that they are who they say they are.
A large part of the film's great look is thanks to Dean Cundey's masterful cinematography and lighting. Tom Atkins (star of several other Carpetner films) has called Cundey the "Master of Darkness" because of this ability to get the most interesting looking shots on screen with virtually no light when being shot. Cundey gives the arctic a rich blue hue that is then interrupted whenever we see fire on screen. Lens flares also permeate the frame from time to time, giving the film a bizarre timeless quality. Ennio Morricone's score is very minimalistic in nature in that we don't hear any melodies or things of the sort, except for the very opening cue, which is one big crescendo of sound (this cue was actually written by John Carpenter with the assistance of frequent collaborator Alan Howarth), is heard again when MacReady and Nauls (T.K. Carter) investigate a bizarre occurrence in MacReady's shack.
This movie is perfect. I do not have a single negative thing to add to this review other than reading about it will not do you any justice. The third act of the film is bleak. And for once, I'm okay with it. The film's emotional questions are never really answered. Who exactly becomes the thing at what time is very ambiguous. Carpenter sold me to the fact that this film is never about hope or defeating the thing. It's about staying alive for as long as one can. To hold out and hold on to what threads of life are attached to us for whatever short amount of time we're alive.
10/10
Rated R
Directed by John Carpenter
Written by Bill Lancaster
Based on the book by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Suggested edition: Official Blu-Ray release
8.1 stars of 10 on IMDb
79% on Rotten Tomatoes
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