The Thing [reviewed by Lackey]

109 min., 1982
Directed by John Carpenter
My rating:
IMDB • Netflix

John Carpenter at his best.

* * *

A dog runs across the Antarctic wasteland, a Norwegian helicopter in hot pursuit. The dog and the chopper reach an American research base; the Yanks kill the ’copter’s passengers in self-defense when they open fire on the dog and the Americans. They send a pair of to the Nordic base, only to find it torched and its crew dead…and evidence that, before they died, the team uncovered an alien spacecraft buried under the ice for the ice for thousands of years. Soon enough, the dog proves to not be a dog at all, but an extraterrestrial life form able to assimilate and mimic other lifeforms. And within hours of its arrival at the American station, some of the crew members are no longer human…

Almost every aspect of John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of The Thing is flawless. The script, which hews closer to the source material (John W. Campbell’s short story “Who Goes There?”) than the 1951 film, and I actually prefer this version–the particular strain of paranoia at its core is more universal in comparison to its predecessor’s Cold War thematics. The script, written by Bill Lancaster (Burt’s son), is meaty and tense, and a lot leaner than a running time of just under 2 hours might suggest. Characterization is terse but effective, using few strokes but making each one count. The dialogue is quotable (“I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter tied to this fucking chair!“) without being obnoxiously clever. We know just enough about the characters to make them believable, not enough to drown in TMI.

The cast is more than a match for the script, and indeed this is one of the best ensembles of ’80s horror. The casting of Kurt Russell in the lead role, as the antiheroic pilot MacReady, may seem obvious now, but Russell was in a transitional phase of his career at the time, moving away from Disney teen-idol roles towards more mature performances in Used Cars and Carpenter’s pre-Thing project, the dystopian Western Escape from New York. He’s perfect for the role of MacReady: tough but not macho, assured but realistic, capable but not cocky, chiefly interested in his own survival, but keenly aware of the stakes. He leads a strong ensemble of largely obscure actors, with only Wilford Brimley (Blair, the biologist), Richard Masur (animal handler Clarke), Keith David (Childs) and Richard Dysart (medical officer Copper) being particularly familiar. They all have great chemistry with each other; when Donald Moffat (as station commander Garry) laments the death one of the Thing’s victims, someone he’d worked with for ten years, he has total credibility.

Meanwhile, in technical terms The Thing represents Carpenter at the top of his game. The film is saturated with atmosphere, and there’s some brilliant use of lighting and shadows. As with another legendary SF-horror of the period, Alien, it’s a gory film that relies as much on suspense as it does on gross-outs for its effect. Its shocks are so effective I’ve even seen seasoned horror vets jump out of their skin. And the effects are simply a tour de force. They’re so inventive and effective that it’s easy to ignore that nowadays, they look just a little dated.

Add a subdued, moody and suspiciously Carpenteresque score by the legendary Ennio Morricone and the end result is a masterpiece. This is a movie that just might have you doubting your own humanity by the time the credits roll.