This movie is creepy, man. I don't consider myself very well versed in classic horror movies so I figured that I had better add the original version of The Thing to my list of films to watch this month. I didn't think it would be really scary due to its age and the fact that most of its scares rely on special effects, but I was pretty wrong. The special effects are realistic enough to still be scary thirty years later and it turns out there are aspects of this film that are far more horrifying than the monster itself.
John Carpenter's The Thing is about an alien spaceship that lands in Antarctica. It and its contents freeze solid for an unknown amount of time until it is uncovered by a Norwegian science team. The thing that is The Thing is brought to their laboratory and thawed out. And that's where the figurative excrement collides with the oscillating cooling device. The Thing kills everyone there except for two survivors, takes the form of a dog, and flees to a nearby American science base. None of this is really shown onscreen except the dog running from the two survivors who are trying to kill it in a helicopter at the beginning of the movie. Long story short, The Thing eventually reveals itself, possessing/imitating the men at the American base one by one and forcing them to kill each other.
I like the mystery revolving around The Thing itself. All we really know at first is that it's from space and that it can perfectly imitate any living organism. Once it is imitating someone it's very difficult to tell which people are being possessed, which adds a whole new dimension to the horror. Most of the people in the film are opposed to indiscriminate killing, so they must be absolutely sure one of their comrades is being imitated before killing them. And if they're wrong and kill someone who is actually himself, they just killed a friend and potential ally (or enemy). At first our victims have no clue how to tell if someone is possessed, but eventually develop a test to figure it out. The Thing appears to react very negatively to fire, therefore igniting a sample of each person's blood in turn will reveal which people are not themselves. The whole mystery of who is The Thing and who isn't is one of the most intriguing aspects of the movie, and I found it fairly difficult to guess which characters were infected. And the whole concept of human imitation is really scary as well. The Thing is so naturally good at what it does that for all I know my whole family could be terrifying aliens that want to kill me. Better torch them all, just to be sure. In addition to this, the desolate setting of the movie also adds to the terror. There's pretty much no one in Antarctica, and close to the beginning of the movie our protagonists lose their radio communications. So they're basically thousands of miles from civilization with no way to call for aid. There's no possible way they're going to escape, so their only option is to fight. And as far as the action sequences go, they're very good. The special effects really are remarkable in The Thing. Everything looks incredibly real, the creatures are meticulously constructed and look quite lifelike. Even thirty years later, when computers can create monsters that look almost entirely real, the creatures in The Thing still look awesome.
No nightmares were had from this one, but from now on I'll be more cautious of people because of that insanely ambiguous ending. The Thing is probably still out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment