Could Have Been A Lot Better

Rating: 6/10 (14 June 2002)

I was round about 15 when I heard about THE THING. A couple of trailers were shown on television promoting the cinema release . A few months later friends started discussing it in class ( They had seen it on pirate video . Obviously I will not condone this but it was very very common to watch pirate videos in the early 80s because that was the only way you`d get see the latest Hollywood blockbusters in those days ) So as soon as I could get my hands on a legal rental copy of THE THING I did so , mainly due to people saying things like " Watch THE THING Theo . The special effects are brilliant " and I was very very disappointed with it. Not only that but I became educated to the fact that good special effects usually = bad film .
Over the years however THE THING has grown on me slightly . It`s a scary disturbing film but one that is ultimately destroyed by its characterisation and plot holes . For example why should we feel sorry for people who are totally unsympathetic in anyway ? I was under the impression that when writing a script you are to feel for the characters in it . I felt absolutely nothing for the men in the base in the Antartic , though maybe I`m doing Bill Lancaster a great disservice and the characters are written in such a cold way to match their surroundings . But the script suffers from several plot holes , the most obvious one being the fact that a research base in the South Pole comes equipped by endless supplies of explosives , guns and flamethrowers . What may I ask do you need all that for ? Is that in case you get attacked by a gang of vicious penguins ? And there`s a ( *****POSSIBLE SPOILER*****) credibility defying scene in which the base members - who have all been proven not to be infected by the alien - all split up for no other reason except to have an ambiguous ending where one of them might be infected by the alien after all . If they`d all stuck together the alien would have been unambiguously killed.
THE THING does have its good points, though not very many. Best plus point is the special effects. If it`d been made 10 or 15 years later it would have been CGI dominated. I think CGI is a pretty poor and unconvincing effect and I`m sick and tired of seeing it constantly used in movies , the effects in this are much better than what we have been used to recently. This is an extremely dark bleak film , perhaps too dark and bleak which caused its disappointing box office sales, and lets not forget it was released at exactly the same time as ET. I`m a big DOCTOR WHO fan so I expect aliens to be nasty scumbags who have got a really nasty streak towards the human race , I don`t expect to see them befriend middle American children or fly around on bicycles , but that`s what aliens did in the 1980s , so I guess that THE THING was the last " they`re coming to get us " sci fi movie to come out of Hollywood for a while