John Carpenter's The Thing review

My review of Batman Arkham Knight is going to take a while, It's a big game, in the meantime, let's review a movie I have a history with.

The night was dark, the Thunderllama, his sister, and her boyfriend sat in the night breeze, talking about really dumb and irrelevant things. The Thunderllama's sister felt like watching a horror movie, and in swooped the noble Llama, coming full force with a horror classic, John Carpenter's The Thing. Funny enough, my brother's PC game collection introduced me to The Thing, when I was looking through them and stumbled across a game called The Thing. This was before I was a gamer, back when my now 18 year old soundtech Thunderbird 2 toy was the shit, but The Thing always stuck with me, all the way until I first watched the movie. Since then I've always held I close to my heart, and hailed it as one of the best films from the 80's. since I haven't posted today, and I watched The Thing a few hours ago, let's dive on in.

The Thing tells the tale of  the ill-fated Kurt Russell and the rest of his team in an isolated American outpost in Antarctica. When the crazed survivors from a nearby outpost show up on the hunt for a dog, Russell and his team end up the latest victims of an ancient alien menace out to eat and assimilate them. What follows is a very tense game of whit's between our heroes and they're extra-terrestrial adversary. In my ramble about fear, I claimed that paranoia is a big part of fear, not knowing where the monster is, and this movie nails it; for a large part of the movie, you're left guessing as to who the monster actually is. This movie is slow, and the audience of the CGI riddled jump scare fests of modern horror will probably find that boring, but this movie does tension very well, again, you don't know who is and isn't the Thing, you feel that paranoia of not knowing who to trust, even Russell's trustworthiness is brought into question, leaving you constantly on edge, waiting for the slowly winding guitar string to finally snap, and for the Thing to reveal itself in all it's 1982 visual effects glory. That could be seen as a negative for the film today, while some of the effects hold up, others look pretty poor, and come across as goofy by modern standards. But when they hold up, they really get under your skin; the blood test scene and the kennel scene really stand out in my opinion. You can't really talk about The Thing without mentioning the monster itself, which takes several disgusting forms throughout the film. Yes, the monster is hideous, without going into detail, if you have a weak stomach, this film will not do you well, the transformations are truly nasty, and the film has plenty of gore for all the gore hounds.

Another positive for the film is the characters, the characters are all unique, and thanks to great acting and writing, all have personalities of their own, which makes the tension and paranoia between them practically contagious when the Thing arrives and starts causing havoc. The sound is also creepy as shit, with the theme being very simple, but beautifully unsettling, and sets the mood perfectly. The film also has a very good climax, with the remaining humans declaring war on the Thing, and taking extreme measures to stop it escaping. While it doesn't have the tension or paranoia that carries most of the film, it carries the bleakness and desperation of the film right through to the end, as Russell and his fellow survivors accept their fate and ensure that the Thing shares that fate.

While it's slow pace is sure to bore some people, and some of it's effects are a bit out of date, this is still a very tense and creepy movie, with some really horrible monsters sprinkled around for good measure. If you want something that will make your skin crawl, you can't really go wrong with this film, check it out.