A couple of weeks ago I watched “The Lady in Black” with a couple of friends, which is a recent horror film starring Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe, and, to be perfectly honest, the movie left a pretty bad taste on my mouth. So after the unsatisfactory feeling, I convinced my friends to watch a real jewel from the horror genre: John Carpenter’s The Thing.

None of my friends had seen this classic, which is a virtually a flawless movie. The Thing is a piece of art, right from the beginning starting with that spooky soundtrack that creates a tune that captures your imagination and let’s you know when something bad will happen. The group of characters is numbered at twelve and the film applies a formula similar to the one seen in Alien of not giving much importance to anyone in particular. Instead, the film portrays them as normal human beings with weaknesses and emotions. A very young Kurt Russell along with Keith David lead the pack, but just barely. The rest of the characters is so balanced that you have absolutely no idea who will the next victim be.

The script and plot of the movie are solid. It is fascinating to think that the base of the film is a short story dated from 1931. By the time you are fifteen minutes into the film, the tension has been building up so effectively, you have no choice but to immediately place yourself in the situation our protagonists are in. This grip the movie holds on you gets tighter with every passing minute, reaching the climax once the movie reaches its ending.

Then we have John Carpenter’s direction and treatment of the film’s plot. There are so many well constructed details, even today -years after its release- a huge fan base keeps investing endless hours of research discussing every possibility of the many theories that can explain the movie’s plot and its highly ambiguous ending. A few examples of the recurrent questions we can find online without answers include:

  • What happened to Fuchs?
  • Why didn’t Palmer and Norris assimilate MacReady at the crater?
  • Who did Fuchs see?
  • Who got rid of the blood?
  • Did Childs really see someone outside the camp?
  • What happens with the survivors?
  • …and the mother of all questions: Who is infected in the end?

This -in my opinion- is where The Thing’s strength is. It is as gentle as a rose in a field of grass on spring. The Thing is more than a horror movie; it is a puzzle that leaves the viewer with a huge desire of trying to put the pieces of it together in order to understand it as a whole, pretty much like what happens with Memento or Mulholland Dr.

When praising the movie, one has to discuss the theories that try to solve the puzzle, which leave us with no other option but to realize that The Thing (the actual creature) is not just another alien that wants to systematically kill everyone on sight, but it’s a cold-blooded, smart, methodical killer, whose strategy even includes injecting fear in its enemies, spreading confusion by deceiving, and cultivating the lost of hope. For instance, in the scene where Norris dies, why would Palmer point at the Norris-head-thing? Because he wanted everyone to believe that he wasn’t infected.

The Thing is a terrific experience and I particularly enjoy repeat viewings to try to decipher its enigma. When one watches Alien, everything is straightforward and no questions are left unanswered. In The Thing, one has to understand that the Thing plans how and when it will reveal itself and who will be its next victim. The ending is a frustrating experience that awakens our hunger of knowledge, and I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t say “Is this how it ends?!”

If you like horror movies and mind boggling movies, then treat yourself: John Carpenter’s The Thing is your option.

HR