“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit
By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
I wasn’t planning on writing about John Carpenter’s “The Thing”. Definitely not for this occasion and honestly… I wasn’t planning on writing about it ever really. I guess I should note before making that statement that it’s one of my favorite horror films and one of my favorite films in general. As much as I prefer Carpenter’s Halloween in many ways, I think “The Thing is probably the best movie overall that he ever made and I say that as someone who loves almost all of them. Now, it had obviously occurred to me when I was first thinking of movies I wanted to write about to cover “The Thing”. I just didn’t know what I could say that hasn’t already been said about the film though. Then the pandemic happened…
I really hope that by the time this write-up sees the light of day that it is all is under control and far from our minds. Right now though? I can’t stop thinking about “The Thing” every time I leave my home. Literally every second of every minute that I’m outside of my home, I’m some degree of scared these days. I’m mostly scared of other people, hence my current fascination with this film. The COVID-19 virus is worldwide. People are dying. You don’t know for sure who has the disease and if they’re smart enough or at least conscientious enough to be avoiding contact with other people and therefore spreading it. It might not kill me but it could very easily kill someone close to me. That simple fact has led to a really deep distrust of everyone and everything around me. I understand Kurt Russell’s character of MacReady in a way I never have before. That’s made the movie so much scarier, to me, than it ever has in any of the myriads of viewings of it I’ve had in my life.
I feel like most people have probably seen John Carpenter’s “The Thing” in the decades since its release but for those that don’t know it like the back of their hand: an alien has come out of the ice in Antarctica. That alien’s only goal is seemingly to imitate and replace lifeforms. It wants to take over all that it’s able to. The creature’s been chased from a nearby outpost to one where a bunch of American men are hunkered down for the winter. The Americans don’t know the men chasing the alien (in the form of a dog) and end up killing those men and taking the “dog” in. Questions like how long the Americans have been there and why they are there are never answered. Actually, you’re given almost no information throughout the film other than what I’ve just stated other than what you might glean for yourself. That’s part of what makes the film so effective. You’re always off balance. There are several men at this installation but the only character you really feel like you know is MacReady… but even then, how well could you say that you know him even by the end of the story? You’re on his side because it’s Kurt Russell and it’s kind of hard to not be on Kurt Russell’s side (especially in a John Carpenter picture). You don’t know if the choices he’s making are right necessarily though. You just know that it seems like he’s doing his best in a horrifying situation.
The same thing could be said for the rest of the characters, I suppose. Yeah, you have sillier comic relief like Palmer and Nauls. You have more hardass characters like Childs and Garry but you’re really only given what you absolutely need to know them. You don’t know who’s to be trusted from scene to scene or second to second. To that end, your attention is demanded, by the film, as most of what happens from the start of this story happens very insidiously. Things feel wrong but not in a way that would be instantly alarming. Something is wrong but no one can really say what it is. The characters are as scared of this thing as you would be. These men feel like real people, locked in a situation that was probably already terrible long before anything from outer space showed up. The majority of what is revealed is done so slowly and subtly. John Carpenter in no way holds your hand through the story. The bits that are as simple as a weird look or a shadow are more frightening than the crescendos where the creature is shown in all its glory.
Speaking of the creature, it’s impossible to talk about this movie without talking about Rob Bottin’s masterful makeup effects. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that these are some of the greatest effects in the history of cinema. I feel confient stating that because “The Thing” is almost 40 years old and the effects hold up incredibly well. There are movies from five years ago that I rewatch and can’t help but notice how dated the effects already look. That’s not the case here in any way, shape, or form. The seams are barely visible even having watched god knows how many featurettes on how Bottin managed to put everything together. He was given a pretty Herculean task too. Carpenter has said that the impetus for “The Thing” was Stephen King saying, that in horror, you never really see the monster. It’s always in the shadows. If someone could do something where it was all right in front of you, they’d really have something. Carpenter wanted to try to accomplish that. Between him and Rob Bottin, there is no arguing that he managed that feat. Yeah, there’s a lot of subtlety but there’s also at least three massive horror set pieces and all of them have stuck with me since I first saw this as a small child. Both the first big reveal in the scene with the dogs and the centerpiece of the film that I can’t bring myself to spoil for anyone that hasn’t seen it… they’re truly spectacular. They’re examples I used for years whenever I called out a movie for using CGI when they could have done things practically. “The Thing” set a bar in 1982 that if filmmakers are unwilling to challenge themselves to live up to with their creature effects any day since, they might as well not even bother with whatever film they’re making.
In the end though, the scariest thing about this film is a fact that’s made clear from the start but absolutely so at the end- there really doesn’t seem to be a point to any of what the characters are doing. They’re trying to stop an entity that every particle is its own sentient being with the same goals of total assimilation of all life. Whatever they do, can they really know for sure that they really destroyed it utterly? There’s every chance that it’s just going to end up back in the ice to restart the exact same process we’ve witnessed over the course of the story again. That’s why the final moments of “The Thing” are so chilling. You have two characters sitting across from one another while the camp burns, both wondering if each other is the man they’ve known since before we were introduced to them, or perhaps one is just a perfect imitation of that man. Both realize the futility of anything they might attempt to do about their predicament. It doesn’t matter. Nothing they can do matters and nothing they have done will actually stop what is seemingly inevitable. That nihilism is maybe the scariest part of the whole movie. Evil is vanquished at the end of pretty much every other horror movie you’ve ever seen. That evil doesn’t often stay vanquished. If a film is successful, you’re going to see some faces of evil so often that they become iconic franchises. At least you have the satisfaction as the credits roll of whatever movie you’re watching knowing that it’s over for the foreseeable future. In this film, you’re given no such resolution. There’s just the inevitability of death for those who are left and another chance for this thing to achieve its goal on the horizon. At least with “The Thing”, you can be comforted in the knowledge that it’s just a movie. A masterwork of tension and paranoia to be sure but still just a movie.
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch