The Thing - Dir. John Carpenter (Review + Analysis)

John Carpenter’s The Thing is one of the director’s best films and is easily up there on my list of ‘Favorite Movies’.  Combining the horror and sci-fi horror together, Carpenter re-tells the story of Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks’ black and white film, The Thing from Another World.  The first film in Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, The Thing follows an American research team in Antarctica as they are pitted against a parasitic extraterrestrial life form that has the ability to assimilate other life forms and in turn, imitate them.  The research team consists of: MacReady (Kurt Russell) – Helicopter Pilot, Blair (Wilford Brimley) – Senior Biologist, Fuchs – Assistant Biologist, Garry (Donald Moffat) – Station Commander, Childs (Keith David) – Chief Mechanic, Nauls – Cook, Palmer – Assistant Mechanic, Copper – Doctor, Norris – Geologist, Bennings – Meteorologist, Clark – Dog Handler, and Windows – Radio Operator.  Not knowing who’s human, the team members must carefully decide whom they can trust.

(Top - Macready, Blair, Fuchs, Garry | Middle - Childs, Nauls, Palmer, Copper | Bottom - Norris, Bennings, Clark, Windows)

While watching this film, there is a certain philosophy to the creature itself.  The alien life form has the ability to assimilate, create, and become perfect imitations of other life forms.  The copy is perfect until it feels threatened, thus revealing its true form in order to defend itself.  The concept is simple until you think about the creature in depth.  When we first see The Thing, it has taken the form of an Alaskan malamute fleeing across Antarctica’s snowy terrain.  It has escaped a Norwegian scientific station (having killed all but two members of the research team) and seeks refuge with the American research team.  As we observe the “dog”, it calmly walks around the station.  There are a few scenes in which the “dog” sits in different areas of the station, as if it were listening to the team members and strategically planning how it will consume the film’s protagonists.  In the ‘dog kennel scene’, it can be debated as to whether or not the ‘Dog-Thing’ (designed by special effects wizard, Stan Winston) deliberately sacrifices itself in order for a part of it to make a stealthy escape and assimilate one of the team members.  After all, while everyone is focused on this monstrous being, a piece of the tentacle slithers out and away from the kennel. 

As we’ve seen in the film, The Thing exists in many different forms.  It can take on the form as large as the “Blair-Thing” to as small as the blood in the Petri dish (the ‘Blood Test Scene’).  Another interesting aspect is how the creature thinks after it has taken the form of a human.  In the film, we see the transformation of Palmer and Norris from human to monster to get an idea of the creature’s thought process.  In the scene where Norris transforms into the “Norris-Thing”, his head detaches from the body and turns into a spider-like creature.  As it crawls away, Palmer, brings it to everyone’s attention when he says “You gotta be fucking kidding me” (at this point, Palmer has to be The Thing because the ‘Blood Test Scene‘ immediately follows).   By saying this, does Palmer not know that he is an imitation or does he point out the "spider-thing" so that he can pass more convincingly as a human?  But as the blood test is about to be conducted on Palmer, he has a very uncomfortable and uneasy look on his face, which suggests that the “Palmer-Thing” possesses some sort of self-awareness.  The best part about this film is that the viewer can come up with many different theories to what the creature is and how it acts.

(From this)

(To this)

Any other setting wouldn’t have worked for this film.  The secluded station in Antarctica conveys the terror and paranoia that is present throughout the movie.  The most prominent theme in this film is trust.  Since The Thing can flawlessly copy other life forms (humans, animals, etc.), it’s hard for everyone to tell each other apart.  Trust deals with the psychology of human behavior.  Carpenter uses this theme to effectively create one of the greatest scenes in film history, ‘The Blood Test Scene’.  Here, MacReady has become so frustrated with The Thing and upset with his fellow team members (if they are even human), that he devises a way to flush the creature out of hiding.  Fearing that the creature will retaliate, MacReady ties everyone up first before he reveals his grand plan.  “We're going to draw a little bit of everybody’s blood, because we're gonna find out who's The Thing.  Watching Norris in there... gave me the idea that maybe every part him was a whole.  Every little piece is an individual animal, with a built in desire to protect its own life.  You see when a man bleeds, it's just tissue.  But blood from one of you Things won't obey when it's attacked.  It'll try to survive.  Crawl away from a hot needle, say.”  This scene is great because of the tension built as MacReady slowly narrows down who is and isn’t The Thing.  The scene not only builds tension between the characters, but also with the viewers.

The whole idea of trust plays a big role when asking the following question about the film’s ending: Was Childs, the station’s chief mechanic, The Thing?  By the end of the film there are five members left alive: MacReady, Garry, Childs, Nauls, and Blair.  The first four are most definitely human, but Blair, who at this point has been locked in a shack outside of the station, may or may not be The Thing.  We eventually find out that he is, because he kills both Garry and Nauls, and eventually transforms into the ‘Blair-Thing’.  After an intense battle, MacReady is able to incinerate the monster with a stick of dynamite.  But what happened to Childs?  Well, early on when MacReady, Garry, and Nauls went to confront Blair, Childs was appointed to guard one of the entrances into the station.  When there is a power outage, the three men witness Childs abandoning his post.  He doesn’t reappear until the ‘Blair-Thing’ has been killed and MacReady is sitting among the burning rubble drinking from a bottle of whisky.  His disappearance supports the possibility that he has been assimilated into The Thing.  If we analyze some key scenes in the film, the first piece of evidence is when Childs is standing guard by the entrance, he is wearing a blue parka, but when he reappears he is now wearing a beige parka. 

 (The blue parka)

(The beige parka)

It should be noted that when The Thing takes over someone, it tears through the victims clothes (as pointed out in these scenes: a) the Bennings assimilation and b) the planted evidence of MacReady’s torn shirt).  Another piece of evidence is when they’re sitting together at the end.  MacReady offers the bottle of whisky to Childs, and when he takes the bottle MacReady laughs quietly to himself.  Fuchs states earlier in the movie, “MacReady, I've been thinking.  A small particle of this thing is enough to take over an entire organism, then everyone should prepare their own meals.”  If this were the case, why would Childs gladly take the bottle with the risk of being assimilated?  When MacReady laughs to himself, as Childs drinks from the bottle of whisky, it is at this point when he realizes that Childs is The Thing.  This is a reference to an earlier scene when MacReady loses to Chess Wizard, a computer program, and pours his glass of whisky into the computer calling it a “cheating bitch”.  He views this moment as a game of chess, believing that if Childs is The Thing, it will take a swig from the bottle so that when it hands the bottle back to MacReady, he’ll drink it, thus assimilating the last surviving team member.

Though a box office failure when it arrived to theaters in 1982, the home video release of The Thing has since gone on to gain a cult following.  Its failure in theaters is due to the fact that moviegoers were watching popular science fiction films such as: Blade Runner, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (all of which were released in 1982).  Carpenter’s idea to take a single genre, Science Fiction, and incorporate horror elements into it, has made the film unique unto its own.  It has great study of human behavior as they are put into a horrifying situation.  The practical effect used for each of the monsters gives a much more realistic tone to the film, trumping most visual effects seen today, and is very effective in creating fear in the audience.  With Ennio Morricone’s ominous score and Carpenter’s direction to invoke fear in the viewer, The Thing is one of the most memorable sci-fi/horror films of all time.