The Thing "Why don't we just wait here for a little while, see what happens"

One of my favorite movie genres is horror because sometimes it produces some of the best film making in cinema (Silence of the Lambs) and it also scares the crap out of me at times. The Exorcist, Paranormal Activity, Poltergeist, and Psycho all have been horrifying and yet have a lot of cinematic value. The Thing was one of those cinematic horror films that I had heard about so I was excited to see it. At the same time I had not seen anything by director John Carpenter so needless to say I had some expectations for this flick. Read on to see how I felt

The Thing is about a group of American scientists in Antartica conducting studies until one day they encounter mad Norwegians trying to kill a dog. They stop the Norwegians and take the dog in and try to investigate what drove the foreigners crazy. Slowly, the dog becomes more and more suspicious until at one point the team realizes that the dog is indeed an alien that adapts to anything he touches. Even though they kill the dog, the scientist are leery about each other and soon turn against one another suspecting each other to be the alien.Will the crew be able to find and kill the alien before it touches everyone? Will they be able to stop it from getting to mainland and conquering the planet? Read on...

The really awesome thing about The Thing is that it plays around with paranoia but combines it with claustrophobia. Also its also plays with isolation because these men really are all alone in Antarctica. Even you the audience don't know who to trust and get a gain your own paranoia. Even Kurt Russel who you feel like you should trust at times seems different. The cast also does a great job of playing into the paranoia and are very convincing. One scene comes to mind is when they are testing everyone's blood and they are tied to a bench. When they discover one of them to be the alien, the other completely freak out and show true terror in their reaction and voices. That scene is also noteworthy because of the great build up it conducts. Each time Russel is testing a blood sample, you feel nervous and get the feeling like something bad is going down. It great film making and fun to watch.


Still the true terror in this film is actually what you do see. In some films like Seven and Silence of the Lambs, a lot of the terror comes from your own imagination playing with what happened. The dog attack during the night was shocking and seeing each transformation the alien takes adds a lot of horror to the film. One of my favorite scenes is when they are trying to defibrillator and the mans chest opens up and actually bites the man's arm off. Its shocking, gory, and scary plus a lot of fun. Each transformation gets worse and worse, even after the man bites the guys arm off the worst part is the head detaching itself and becoming some weird spider creature. Some people are disgusted by the film, but it looks awesome in my opinion and applaud the visual and special effects team. 

Overall the cast is awesome in this film including greats like Kurt Russel, Wilford Brimley, and Keith David. It is a lot of fun, as a Keith David fan, to see him in action and has adds great emotion and power to the film. John Carpenter did a great job as director and had some great shots as well as controlling the emotion, pace, and tension throughout the film. Overall this was a fun horror film. There were some mistakes but nothing that takes this film out as great. Its fun and worth a watch. I think I originally gave this a 4/5 but I have changed to a 3.5/5. Enjoy!