01-02-09
John Carpenter’s The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)



Now I keep hearing this called ‘the scariest movie’ ever, well it does a really great job at scaring you, but I definitely wouldn’t call it ‘the scariest movie ever’. I do agree that it has to be one of the goriest movies that I’ve ever seen, I wasn’t even expecting something as gory as it was, so it really surprised me when I found out that it really was that gory. Now today was the first time that I’ve ever saw this movie, I keep hearing about how great and scary it is, so I’ve been really interested in seeing it for a while now. And I’m actually blown away, because I’ve never been too big a fan of the horror genre, for some reason it just doesn’t entertain me as much I wish it could. But I really haven’t seen many ‘classic’ horror movies, and I’ve been seeing a lot of them recently, and for the most I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

Now I’ve also heard people calling this a B-horror movie, maybe it’s just me but I didn’t really see it. When I think of a B-horror movie, I end up thinking of Evil Dead, and I wasn’t too big a fan of Evil Dead. The effects for The Thing, I guess could be considered ahead of it’s time, because I don’t even think many movies that come out today have great effects like The Thing did. The actual ‘creature’ it self is really disturbing, I mean it’s done so well, that it just looks so real. Well I’m not sure that it looks exactly ‘real’, but that was just a way to show how amazing the effects were. I also think that I may have not gotten a B-horror movie feel from it was because that I haven’t really seen much B-horror movies besides the Evil Dead series.

Kurt Russell was amazing in this; he was perfect as the ‘hero’ of The Thing. I actually really haven’t seen him in much, so I didn’t what to expect. I was actually sort of surprised at seeing him as the ‘hero’ because the main thing I know Russell for is Death Proof, and in that he’s the villain not the ‘hero’. This was also the first Carpenter movie that I can remember seeing, I saw Halloween when I was much younger, but I really can’t remember it any. But I hope to see some more of his movies in the future, because I’ve heard that he’s supposedly to the best horror movie director, now I’m not really sure about that, I do think he’s the most known horror director. I think Halloween is the next one of his I want to see, because I remember as a kid that I loved it. Besides Russell though, none of the actors really ‘stood out’ for me.

It did a few intense scenes though, mainly the one where MacReady is testing everyone’s blood to see who’s one of the creatures and who’s normal. There are a few other intense and great scenes, but I don’t really feel like mentioning them all right now, and some of them could be considered spoilers, so that’s another reason why I’m not mentioning them. But even with this one viewing, I think I can consider this one of my favorite movies. With me getting so close to finishing my top 100, I think I’m going ahead and going to put it on my favorites list, and I’m positive that it’s going to make it very high. It may even make it into my top 10, I loved it that much. I can definitely consider it one of my favorite horror movies, I think this and Dawn Of The Dead (2004) are my two favorite horror movies. But as I said earlier in the review, I haven’t really seen much horror movies yet.