In the lifeless frozen tundra of
Antarctica, a fleeing dog appears at an isolated research outpost with a
chopper hot on its heels. The two men in the helicopter, loaded up with
kerosene, assault rifles, and grenades, seem hellbent on the dog’s destruction
at all cost, recklessly firing at the panicked canine with no regard for the
safety of the humans it’s run to for protection, and blowing up their own aircraft
in the pandemonium. Not understanding the language of the foreign intruders and
believing that they’re under attack from crazed soldiers, a leader of the
outpost acts quickly to eliminate the threats (with a bullet to the dome) – a
decision that could prove to be not just fatal, but apocalyptic. The men of the outpost have
no idea that they’ve just given harbor to a world-ender, an ancient organism
that’s been encased beneath the ice for thousands of millennia until its recent
release, a horrifying, formless, highly evolved alien parasite that can
overtake and perfectly imitate any animal-based lifeform. In this case, a dog.
As the movie progresses and the scientists and specialists
of the outpost realize what they’re dealing with, and witness the shapeless
abomination’s grotesque mutations, a chill colder than the glacial air sets deep
into their bones, seeping up into their brains. Any one of them could be
compromised; any one of them could be the “thing.” A creature with no
ostensible motive but to survive and replicate through host lifeforms, like a
sentient plague. A doomsday in men’s skin, that their simulations show could
infect the entire world’s population three years after first contact with
civilization. In a very
Lovecraftian manner, one of the men is driven mad by this
dread knowledge and in his existential terror destroys all of their vehicles
and comms equipment to prevent any escape or calls for rescue. Later, realizing
that the ageless monstrosity could simply freeze again until future extraction,
the small band of survivors conclude that the only remaining option is to utterly
demolish the outpost with explosives, tear it asunder and reduce the camp back
to a primeval wasteland of ice and snow and silence, hopefully ridding the
planet of every last fragment of the profane creature, even if it shrinks their
own chances of survival from slim to none. If they succeed, no one will ever
even know their heroic self-sacrifice, that they battled death on the world’s
doorstep. If they fail, well, can’t say they didn’t give it the old college
try.
While
They Live (1988) is his cult classic,
The
Fog (1980) his underrated gem of atmospheric horror, and
Halloween
(1978) his beloved, game-changing slasher that impacted American horror cinema
with a meteoric force (and everyone points to as his crowning achievement), I
will go to my grave with the unwavering belief that
The Thing (1982)
stands as legendary genre director
John Carpenter’s ultimate masterpiece, as
well as one of the top ten greatest horror films of all time. It’s both a loose remake (of
The Thing from Another World [1951]) and an adaptation (of
John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 novella
Who Goes There?), and what makes the
whole endeavor even better is that Carpenter references the original film in
Halloween.
One of the scary movies that the children in the film
watch on
television is
The Thing from Another World, and directors typically don't include a movie reference in their own films unless it’s important to them, so
it must have been a literal dream come true for Carpenter to get the chance to put
his own vision of the film and novella on screen only a few years later.
When it comes to
The Thing, I don’t know whether to
be more awed by the technical craftsmanship of the ice-cool director and
his crew, or the conceptual execution of the story. Unlike the extraterrestrials
of other sci-fi horror movies – like the
Xenomorphs from the
Alien
franchise – the “thing” is unidentifiable when in human form, so you never know
who the hell you’re fighting against, and unlike other shape-changer aliens
that give themselves away by being cold, emotionless creeps – like the pod
people from
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) – the “thing”
replicates human emotion perfectly, possibly even retaining the host’s
memories. Which also begs the horrifying question, is there still a human
consciousness present after the victim’s body has been taken over? Super yikes.
And even if the person who’s been taken over was acting weird, you know what
situation any functioning person might act weird in? One where a shape-shifting
alien was stealing the bodies of their coworkers at a remote outpost in
Antarctica where all their means of escape have been destroyed and they have no
idea who’s an actual human and who’s an ungodly demon parasite from deep space
that’s going to turn their body into Silly Putty.
The dread never stops building, and the nightmarish stakes
feel palpable for the characters, and although the performances from the actors
aren’t going to be earning any retrospectives, they convey the sense of
impending doom and visceral horror effectively enough (not to mention their
brilliant deliveries of some of the home-run one-liners from screenwriter
Bill Lancaster). Plus,
Kurt Russell was in his prime as the endearingly grumpy
MacReady, a broody, hard-drinking helicopter pilot who steps into the
leadership role because he’s braver than the scientists and doctors, and more level-headed
than the technicians and specialists on base. The man was nothing but hair,
gruff charisma, and an occasional somersault, and there’s never been anything more
we’ve needed from him.
John Carpenter has become a highly respected composer in
his own right and has scored nearly every one of his films himself, but for
The
Thing he brought in one of cinema’s most venerated composers: the Italian
maestro
Ennio Morricone. His own pulsing score seems to be a nod to the
trademark moody soundscapes Carpenter was developing at the time, and the relentless
pounding of Morricone’s deep synth chords creates the nerve-wracking Michael
Myers-esque tension of a mindlessly hostile, seemingly unstoppable being that’s intent on achieving its ominous goals no matter who or what stands in
the way.
The Thing also has some of the best compositions of
Carpenter’s career as well, with no small thanks to cinematographer
Dean Cundey. The duo formed a symbiotic partnership over the years working on such
classics as
Halloween,
The Fog, and
Escape from New York
(1981), and
The Thing saw a culmination of their talents and years of
experience together. Carpenter’s ensemble staging gives a claustrophobic feel
to the images by frequently packing multiple characters into one confined shot,
and their positioning shows us who has the power in a scene, or who’s currently
under the most suspicion of secretly being an infernal body-snatcher that’s
going to convert everyone's flesh into angry, wet spaghetti. By shooting in wides, Carpenter
also gives the characters more space for movement and allows the audience to
see all the men’s reactions to the onscreen horror at once, negating the need
to constantly cut back and forth from person-to-person and place-to-place in a
manner that would throw off the pacing of his slow-building dread.
Dean Cundey (who would go on to shoot many of the biggest
blockbusters of the 80s and 90s, including the
Back to the Future
trilogy,
Who Framed Roger Rabbit [1988], and
Jurassic Park [1993])
showed off his own talents by creating some truly eerie color palettes for the
film. I’m always struck by the otherworldly ways his purples, blues and oranges
play off the stark white snow and glaring Antarctic ice, as the smothering
black of the night sky pushes in around the characters like walls, making the researchers
themselves look like shades lost in purgatory, imprisoned and awaiting their
final judgement on some hellish alien terrain. Nothing beats the scenes where
MacReady and company visit the desolate Norwegian outpost though. Cundey
cleverly lights the sinister darkness of the burned-out buildings with nothing
but a flashlight, a lamp, and gaping holes in the wall that look like a
juggernaut was trying to punch its way out. The threadlike beam of the
flashlight and the dim glow of the lamp keep the atmosphere amped up, and the
bright bursts of daylight streaming through the walls provide backlighting that
also works to reveal a subtly beautiful production design, as the scorched and
splintered wood and frost-covered interiors flood the screen with a texture so
rich I can feel my brain wanting to grow fingers to reach out and brush its
tips over (while my real fingers are like, “what the heck man, we’re not good
enough for you?”).
However, the true mastermind behind the
The Thing,
and the reason it’s so unforgettable, is
Rob Bottin: his mind-blowingly elaborate
special makeup effects for the movie are some of the most revered in film history.
The 22-year-old wunderkind went so hard on the film that he was hospitalized
with exhaustion after production wrapped, but hey, I guess that’s just what
happens when you work every single day of the week for 57 weeks straight. It’s
difficult to comprehend how he pulled off the alien’s mutations in this film
using only practical effects, and his creature designs are so creatively
revolting and so disgustingly creative that they deserve to be in a museum. And it’s truly these mutations that ratchet the atmosphere up from simple horror to
existential, mind-bending terror. What the creature does to organic lifeforms is
nothing short of defilement; it makes a mockery of its host’s anatomy. Bottin’s
effects are where the exceptional craftsmanship and the conceptual execution of
The Thing reach the pinnacles of perfection together. If you put yourselves
in the shoes of the characters, and you see this creature that can perfectly
mimic your friends and colleagues that you’ve known for years, and it does so
by turning their bodies into perversions against nature, and you know you could
be next, and you have the knowledge that if it escapes all of humanity could be
infected in just over three years, what do you feel? For me it’s about the
bleakest horror I can imagine. Execution and craftsmanship. That’s how I know
The
Thing is a masterpiece of the genre, and that’s why
The Thing will
forever be in my pantheon of perfect horror films.
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