A textbook example of suspense and horror

Rating: 10/10 (28 May 2006)

Much as Star Trek: Nemesis was released terminally close to The Two Towers and fell well below box office expectations, Universal chose to try and kill the then-rising star director John Carpenter's career by releasing The Thing a mere two weeks after a little feel-good piece called E.T. It is somewhat funny, the spin history can put on things, because now as a Lucas-like special edition has failed to reinvigorate interest in the family-friendly box office hit, The Thing has found a new life as a cult piece. This is not to put down Spielberg's career-building piece, as it is a well-made film in its own right. But years after I have forgotten Spielberg's effort, and dismissed it after he tried to make even more suitable only for infants, I still remember the mood it put me in, the first time I saw The Thing, and watched as the creepiest score I have heard in at least a thousand films played over elegantly understated credits. Put simply, The Thing should be shown to film-making students as an example of how you build suspense.
The film starts out innocently enough, with what appears to be a husky running from a helicopter as a (lousy) sharpshooter tries to kill it. Running and flying into an American research station, the husky tries to bond with the present staff as the sharpshooter emerges and tries to warn them in broken-sounding Norwegian. As the helicopter is accidentally destroyed and the sharpshooter shot dead, the husky works its way into the confidence of the camp, eventually placed in the kennel at the insistence of one of its edgier residents. The new husky soon reveals itself to be an alien creature, not that this is any surprise to the audience. As the alien absorbs the other huskies, the men at the research centre are fortunate enough to get to it before it finishes. Whether one of them has already been absorbed before two of them pay a visit to the station the Norwegians came from is a matter of debate, but things take a definite turn for the worse when they bring back some artifacts from the site.
Screenwriters like Ehren Kruger could learn a lot from The Thing. Although the scenario itself is incredibly harrowing, especially when you consider what could happen if the chameleon found its way into civilisation, its the details that make the story what it is. One of the men, considering the what could happen question, destroys every means the team has to call for help or leave, cutting them off completely. While most of the others do nothing quite so dramatic, their anatognism towards one another makes scenes that would normally be test patterns into something that may make viewers bite their nails. In contrast to the The Thing From Another World, this tension comes from the important fact that destroying the evil alien is almost secondary to identifying it. And in one of those happy coincidences, the scene where our hero does learn to identify the alien is far from the end of the tension. In point of fact, the scene in which he administers the test to identify who has been absored is unequalled in American film when it comes to tension. I still leap out of my seat in the quick shot where the "infected" blood sample is tested.
Although it is generally bad for a film to rely on its special effects, both the story and said effects are top of the line here. The Thing was the eighth film on which Rob Bottin provided special makeup effects, and is among the films cited when his godlike reputation in the field is discussed. Regardless of whether one considers makeup effects an extension of special effects or otherwise, both can be summed up as an art where the goal is to fool people into believing they are seeing something they're not. I doubt that anyone is going to believe they are seeing an alien organism of any kind until it becomes commonplace, but like the acting, writing, and music, Bottin's artwork is a wall in a tense atmosphere that dares the viewer to look away. As in all the best films that ask the viewer to accept unreal elements, The Thing does this the right way, by suspending disbelief in graduating steps. By the time the most outrageous unrealities are unleashed upon us, we have been so drawn into the world of the story that there is no going back. It never ceases to amaze me how much the filmmakers of the 1980s could get away with in terms of stretching reality compared to their present-day cousins.
This would be (at least) the third of many collaborations between Kurt Russell and John Carpenter. The two never work better than when they work together. Russell has shown a number of different modes under Carpenter's direction, from the loud arrogance of Big Trouble In Little China to the hoarse understatement of Escape From New York. In The Thing, Russell starts at the latter end of his acting spectrum and ends a couple of steps toward the former. Not that Russell is the most versatile actor in the world, but this film calls for an everyday man type, and Russell more than fits the bill. The audio commentary recorded for the Laserdisc goes into the less than noble motivations the men have for being at the research station, and Russell is best among this cast at giving the viewer a character they can see the events through the eyes of. Not that the rest of the cast let the side down in any way. Everyone from Wilford Brimley to David Clennon gives their character all three dimensions, and the story benefits enourmously from it.
I gave The Thing a ten out of ten. In a season of remakes for the sake of remakes, see this for an example of a remake done right.