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The Thing
Monster Horror Thriller / English / 1982
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Been a while since I've seen it.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
A dog.
My opinion on this movie has remained pretty much unchanged throughout the years, and that's that The Thing is a very simple, but very effective monster movie.
I know people want to credit John Carpenter with big braining this whole production, but I've seen the sorts of movies he makes and The Thing isn't nearly as polished as you think it is.
If you don't already know the premise, it's that a Norwegian Antarctic installation chases a husky onto an American Antarctic installation and die when they crash their helicopter and open fire. It's eventually revealed however that they were trying to kill "The Thing", which is an alien they unearthed with the ability to absorb and perfectly mimic any person given enough time and privacy. Once this is revealed, the conceit becomes discovering who is the sussy imposter.
My biggest issues with this movie are that 1.) the cast size is about on-par with 12 Angry Men, but only about half the cast get even a fraction as much time to distinguish themselves from one another, so it's hard to become invested in anybody but Kurt Russel's character, 2.) this exacerbates the fact that it's never made quite clear what the sequence of infection is. It's eventually established that as much as a particle of The Thing can infect you, but given such an incredibly low standard for infection, this makes it virtually impossible for the movie not to be able to rationalize any deus ex machina. Finally, 3.) I'm just not a fan of the monster designs.
I know this is perhaps the biggest sticking point between this movie it's 2011 "premake", but I genuinely have never found the monster designs appealing. They're made to look gross, which, congratulations, you succeeded in that, but I'm also watching a screen and am supposed to be enjoying what I'm looking at. Gratuitous gore and body horror is almost as far as you can possibly get from something appealing to watch.
This is a big reason why a lot of what's taken for granted with modern horror just does not fundamentally work. Because scaring the viewer and making them ill is honestly the opposite of how I want to feel watching anything.
Not that The Thing is scary, but it sure is strange that I can find stuff online suggesting that Carpenter wanted to make a monster movie that deviated heavily from the "man in a costume" concept that comprised the original Thing From Another World, yet ironically this movie succumbs to it's own ridiculously dated effects.
The scene in which Palmer bites Windows' head, lifts him bodily off the ground, and flails him around is peak cartoon violence in this movie. It's absolutely absurd to watch. Much of the blood is plainly jam, several effects are only possible with reverse shots, and it's very apparent when you're looking at a mold versus a monster prop meant to be moved.
That's not to say that all of the practical effects are bad, I'd say they're pretty decent overall, especially during the autopsy scenes, but the worst of them date this movie harder than anything else and again, the monster just isn't appealing to look at. Compare this to another classic movie monster, the Xenomorph from Alien, that monster was also about changing forms and ripping through peoples' bodies, but it looked cool.
There's a decent amount of other bullshit in the movie like how they find one of the Norwegian guys that killed himself... somehow by slitting both wrists... while his neck has been half severed... and his blood freezing mid-flow. How in the **** did that happen?
How also did Blaire get a computer to simulate the speed of a global infection AND determine the % chance that anyone on the base is already infected?
The nice 75% is especially convincing, definitely didn't script some bullshit command line program in a few minutes for that one.
The cast use flamethrowers liberally to burn bodies, even indoors, and somehow the whole base never catches fire? We know that they use fire extinguishers, but they're not always shown and this includes scenes where most of the cast is tied up, and an entire wall got torched.
Better yet, what even do these characters DO around here?
We got a doctor... we got a pilot... and some other guys... but we literally only see them drink, play pool, and smoke weed. What are their actual jobs? It seems like Garry is supposed to be some sort of deputy or something, but he's got some of the worst trigger discipline in the world.
There's lots of random shit like that, but at least the movie trades away character development for plot development. Not that that's very deep either of course, but the movie's immediately engaging and a solid popcorn flik from beginning to end.
Thinking back on the Halloween theme and how it was better than Platoon, I kinda feel like The Thing was a bit too reserved with it's theme. GRANTED it's just a couple isolated beats, but it's such a great tone-setter. The slow-pan to the dog when everyone's forgotten about it and the theme kicks in? That's great.
It's also an excellent touch to queue it up when MacReady passes the booze off to Childs after he says "let's wait and see what happens". We don't know that MacReady was ever infected, but we DO know that he alone was told that people shouldn't share food, so passing the booze could be seen as extremely malicious.
It's a nice little open question ending, and it's a fun sit, but I still can't really call this movie a favorite. It just doesn't put itself over the edge by doing anything other than what it advertises on the tin, and the tin doesn't go into much detail, list the ingredients, or even include a contact number so that I call the manufacturer to complain.
Final Verdict: [Pretty Good]
The Thing
Monster Horror Thriller / English / 1982
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Been a while since I've seen it.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
A dog.
My opinion on this movie has remained pretty much unchanged throughout the years, and that's that The Thing is a very simple, but very effective monster movie.
I know people want to credit John Carpenter with big braining this whole production, but I've seen the sorts of movies he makes and The Thing isn't nearly as polished as you think it is.
If you don't already know the premise, it's that a Norwegian Antarctic installation chases a husky onto an American Antarctic installation and die when they crash their helicopter and open fire. It's eventually revealed however that they were trying to kill "The Thing", which is an alien they unearthed with the ability to absorb and perfectly mimic any person given enough time and privacy. Once this is revealed, the conceit becomes discovering who is the sussy imposter.
My biggest issues with this movie are that 1.) the cast size is about on-par with 12 Angry Men, but only about half the cast get even a fraction as much time to distinguish themselves from one another, so it's hard to become invested in anybody but Kurt Russel's character, 2.) this exacerbates the fact that it's never made quite clear what the sequence of infection is. It's eventually established that as much as a particle of The Thing can infect you, but given such an incredibly low standard for infection, this makes it virtually impossible for the movie not to be able to rationalize any deus ex machina. Finally, 3.) I'm just not a fan of the monster designs.
I know this is perhaps the biggest sticking point between this movie it's 2011 "premake", but I genuinely have never found the monster designs appealing. They're made to look gross, which, congratulations, you succeeded in that, but I'm also watching a screen and am supposed to be enjoying what I'm looking at. Gratuitous gore and body horror is almost as far as you can possibly get from something appealing to watch.
This is a big reason why a lot of what's taken for granted with modern horror just does not fundamentally work. Because scaring the viewer and making them ill is honestly the opposite of how I want to feel watching anything.
Not that The Thing is scary, but it sure is strange that I can find stuff online suggesting that Carpenter wanted to make a monster movie that deviated heavily from the "man in a costume" concept that comprised the original Thing From Another World, yet ironically this movie succumbs to it's own ridiculously dated effects.
The scene in which Palmer bites Windows' head, lifts him bodily off the ground, and flails him around is peak cartoon violence in this movie. It's absolutely absurd to watch. Much of the blood is plainly jam, several effects are only possible with reverse shots, and it's very apparent when you're looking at a mold versus a monster prop meant to be moved.
That's not to say that all of the practical effects are bad, I'd say they're pretty decent overall, especially during the autopsy scenes, but the worst of them date this movie harder than anything else and again, the monster just isn't appealing to look at. Compare this to another classic movie monster, the Xenomorph from Alien, that monster was also about changing forms and ripping through peoples' bodies, but it looked cool.
There's a decent amount of other bullshit in the movie like how they find one of the Norwegian guys that killed himself... somehow by slitting both wrists... while his neck has been half severed... and his blood freezing mid-flow. How in the **** did that happen?
How also did Blaire get a computer to simulate the speed of a global infection AND determine the % chance that anyone on the base is already infected?
The nice 75% is especially convincing, definitely didn't script some bullshit command line program in a few minutes for that one.
The cast use flamethrowers liberally to burn bodies, even indoors, and somehow the whole base never catches fire? We know that they use fire extinguishers, but they're not always shown and this includes scenes where most of the cast is tied up, and an entire wall got torched.
Better yet, what even do these characters DO around here?
We got a doctor... we got a pilot... and some other guys... but we literally only see them drink, play pool, and smoke weed. What are their actual jobs? It seems like Garry is supposed to be some sort of deputy or something, but he's got some of the worst trigger discipline in the world.
There's lots of random shit like that, but at least the movie trades away character development for plot development. Not that that's very deep either of course, but the movie's immediately engaging and a solid popcorn flik from beginning to end.
Thinking back on the Halloween theme and how it was better than Platoon, I kinda feel like The Thing was a bit too reserved with it's theme. GRANTED it's just a couple isolated beats, but it's such a great tone-setter. The slow-pan to the dog when everyone's forgotten about it and the theme kicks in? That's great.
It's also an excellent touch to queue it up when MacReady passes the booze off to Childs after he says "let's wait and see what happens". We don't know that MacReady was ever infected, but we DO know that he alone was told that people shouldn't share food, so passing the booze could be seen as extremely malicious.
It's a nice little open question ending, and it's a fun sit, but I still can't really call this movie a favorite. It just doesn't put itself over the edge by doing anything other than what it advertises on the tin, and the tin doesn't go into much detail, list the ingredients, or even include a contact number so that I call the manufacturer to complain.
Final Verdict: [Pretty Good]