The Thing

The Thing as a horror concept actually trails back its existence a lot long than people may anticipate. Starting off as a 1938 sci-fi horror novella written by American writer, John W. Campbell Jr, the story about a group of scientists slowly going insane from paranoia after discovering a long-frozen alien creature that can perfectly copy any living organism managed to grab people’s attention enough that an American black and white sci-fi horror movie was created in 1951 by director, Christian Nyby. While it was very well received by critics, the movie took more inspiration from the story rather than producing a version that evolved with the cinematic medium, which is what caused producers during the mid-1970s to ask Universal Pictures to create a proper adaptation. Placing lower-budget horror director, John Carpenter, in charge of the movie, The Thing took a lot of hard work and effort to create and it resulted in a cult classic in the sci-fi horror genre. Set in the isolated landscape of Antarctica, a group of American researchers take in a dog that was being hunted down by Norwegian scientist for unknown reasons.  Upon taking him in, they quickly release why the animal was being hunted down as the dog is actually an alien creature that has the ability to perfectly mimic any living creature. After all the animals are taken out, the team’s helicopter pilot, R.J. MacReady (played by Kurt Russell) realizes that any of the 12 people in this facility could have already been taken over, and they have to determine who is the alien being in question before it kills them all and heads to copy the rest of humanity. Despite its cult status as one of the best sci-fi horror movies of all time, critics downright hated this movie when it was released, dismissing it for its visual repulsion, poor characterization, and bleak ending and tone. While its nowhere near the level of putrid that the critics spewed onto it and there are several elements about this film that would make it a fun retro watch, some of those flaws are pretty evident when re-watching this film that do keep it from the higher ranks of horror that it has been propped up to be. 

It couldn’t have been easy for this movie as from early as its creation to its release, it was faced with plenty of problems, stumbles, and issues. A constant change of writers and directors, the harsh conditions of shooting in a frozen environment, the incredibly high budget that was unheard of for a horror movie within this time (about $15 million), and literally coming out around the same time as E.T, a much more beloved alien-based movie that had the benefit of being more kid-friendly and therefore, more appealing to casual audiences, it had a lot going against it. From a concept perceptive, the idea of this alien creature pitting the humans against each other is brilliant in creating easy tension and easy drama; not only working quite cleverly as a metaphor for Communistic paranoia that would have been relevant during the first movie’s creation, but also function as a newer form of sci-fi horror that was only recently visually touched up upon by Ridley Scott’s, Alien. It’s not an overly long sit, the ‘’less than happy ending’’ was really nothing new for horror or for sci-fi at this time so its bizarre to see that it was an issue for critics at the time, and it’s not a story that requires a lot of exposition or story as the mystery of the creature is far more effective, yet something about the movie lacks a sense of grab that it really needed to work in the long-haul. There’s a sense of boredom that eventually sets in after the initial creature attack as scenes start to feel repeated and further drawn out when they don’t need to. Possibly due to the fact that the movie is really only strengthened by this ingenious premise, yet the supportive tissue required to make it really function like fleshed out characters with established pasts and goal not really being that strong, the film isn’t able to reach its full potential and gets a tad bit monotonous after a while. The movie can sometimes feel a bit truncated, with scenes feeling like they’re missing in the flow of the film to establish other happenings, and while the survivalist nature of this story is effective and leads way to some interesting commentary and aspects that feel akin to several murder mysteries, it leaves a lot of the other movie-important elements out to make those more prevalent. The screenplay by Bill Lancaster is fairly unmemorable and doesn’t feel like it brings any thoughtful insights that should easily come with this insight, and due to the direction by John Carpenter being effective in the tense scenes, but fairly mundane in the regular moments, it does also feel slightly uneven. It feels like a film that will work wonders for horror fans, but maybe not those that are looking for something a little more. 

The cast of the movie are pretty decent actors, but the movie suffers from way too many characters. While twelve is definitely better than the original stories 37, that still leaves half the cast of this movie being nameless and pure monster fodder. It does make sense from a writing standpoint for the book as the excess of people leads to a lot more options for who could be taken over, but weirdly by making the number less massive, it makes a lot of the characters feel extra pointless and nothing about the writing even tries to make them feel memorable characters. The movie really lacks any interesting characters and mostly just relies on the strength of the actors to pull them through because none of them are given any strong element of backstory or depth and are just left with a pretty one-note trope. People like Kurt Russell and Keith David manage to stand out as they are the lead characters and just because they are effortlessly cool people who would easily thrive in this kind of ”think first, feel later” environment, but most of the others like A. Wilford Brimley, T. K. Carter, David Clennon, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, Joel Polis, Donald Moffat and Thomas Waites are just painfully forgettable and don’t offer much to the movie outside of just having more options for who the threat could be. Despite this though, most of the acting is still totally fine; it does feel like these people are going insane and are losing faith in the other, and if the cast was just shrunk down to about 7-8 people and each of these individuals were given more distinct identities outside of their job roles, it would have worked way better.

Despite the hate the movie got, the one thing that everybody was able to mostly agree on was the impressive visual effects. While some still saw them as overly grotesque and unpleasant, no one could deny the outstanding effort that went into putting these monstrosities together and it results in some fantastically creepy moments that look both horrifying and even slightly cool on a different level. While most horror function better from the element of the unknown (which this monster also works brilliantly on with never truly knowing whether someone is taken over or not), the other extreme can also be effective if used correctly and these creations are creative, disturbing, disgusting and completely unforgettable. There’s an otherworldly presence from each one of them not just in how intensely graphic they can look, but also in the size of certain appendages and the inhumane noises they make, it leads to a lot of memorable moments and visuals. Overly, visually and from a technical level, the movie is pretty effective. The location is nice and isolated with effective production design by John J. Llyod (it truly feels like an icebox of death), the cinematography by Dean Cundey does its best to show off these monsters without revealing the mechanics behind it, the music by Ennio Morricone can be pretty tense in moments, the sound design of these creatures is truly memorable and effective chilling, and the tension for the movie feels pretty spot-on. While Carpenter wasn’t a famous horror maker yet, he was always good at suspense in his other movies and most of the scenes that require a sense of slow scary build up are actually pretty effective and some of the better moments overall (a blood test has never been more engaging).

Despite its massive hatred among the critical spectrum, the movie isn’t nearly as bad as it was laid out to be. It definitely has its problems that hold it back from being a great movie, but there is never a point in this movie where it feels like it didn’t have effort put into it. It did its best at trying to recreate a story that was famous for its time and didn’t really have a faithful screen version done about it to this point. While the other one has been much better received and its up to the fans to decide which one is technically better, this one still has some great moments of tension and fantastic visuals to check out on its own. There won’t be much story or character and it will feel pretty slow in moments, but those issues are worth wadding through to get to some great tense moments and some iconic monster designs and visual effects. A divisive movie for some, but will definitely be a cult favorite for many, a film that will duplicate its viewers as much as it can duplicated the human race.