A masterwork of horror atmosphere and special effects

Rating: 10/10 (27 October 2015)

No horror movie brings you quite the icy, venereal chill of John Carpenter's The Thing. It's an undisputed horror classic that has lived on since it's slightly anticlimactic, ill received release back in the 80's (people didn't know a good fright flick when they saw it back then, I guess). Nevertheless, it's a heart stopping odyssey of ambient antarctic unease, sickening, squirm inducing practical effects, and a veil of impending danger and paranoia that blankets both the characters and the viewer, like the thick drifts of snow that blanket the screen to gorgeous effect. The story by now is timeless: a team of antarctic researchers in a remote location come across a gigantic spacecraft buried in the tundra, and unearth a grotesque, frozen creature that upon being thawed, wreaks havoc on them and their facility. It's an imitator, this monster, and can hide in plain sight, within the flesh and blood of any one of their crew. This gives way to extreme distrust, mental unraveling and mutiny as it turns them against one another. For me there's nothing quite as iconic as the opening: Ennio Morricone's ominous, rhythmical score kicks in as we see two hysterical Norwegians in a helicopter, Chasing a dog across the frozen terrain. It's one of the most dazzling, evocative entrances to a fright flick ever filmed. Kurt Russell, in his whiskered, macho glory plays Macready, the head of the team. Russell is always solid, especially in genre stuff, and he's almost as distinct and iconic here as his Snake Plissken character. T.K. Carter, Donald Moffat, Keith David Wilford Brimley and more round out the rest of the team, and I won't mention standouts because they're all just fantastic and each play their part to a T. A huge highlight is the gruesome creature effects. When the it tries to imitate something and messes up, the result is a grossly misshapen slab of slimy nondescript gore, guaranteed to freak and gross you out in equal measures. I won't spoil anything with specifics, but the dog kennel and defibrillator scenes are time capsule worthy and should be shown in special effects makeup schools as a shining example. Carpenter pulls off the second absolutely flawless horror movie of his career with this one, not an easy feat, especially in this genre. All the parts fit together perfectly, resulting in as chilling sci fi horror for the ages.