Formally perfect scary movie

Rating: 10/10 (14 January 2004)

One of Carpenter's few true masterpieces. Reviled by critics at the time of its release, it's built a healthy cult following since then, but still suffers from a reputation as the ne plus ultra of alien splatter movies. It's a reputation that is both deserved and unfair--Rob Bottin's effects are certainly repulsive and shocking, even by today's standards, but they are few and far between, and that's actually what makes the movie so scary. 'The Thing' is a study in contrasts--long segments of unsettling quiet punctuated by sudden, brief blasts of grotesque horror. It's an approach that works beautifully--in fact, this may be the paranoid horror movie to end all paranoid horror movies, surpassing the superficially similar 'Alien' and even 'Night of the Living Dead' in its style and polish (if not its substance). The large cast of character actors is uniformly superb, with Wilford Brimley, Keith David, and Donald Moffat perhaps standing out. Bill Lancaster's screenplay is economical and convincing, resisting the urge to stereotype its characters or over-inflate its dialogue. While 'The Thing' is known for its humorlessness, to my ear the script plays like the bleakest and subtlest of black comedies, with its unexpected doses of hideous death, and its terrified, bickering scientists never managing to pull themselves together and solve anything. The lighting and slithery cinematography are magnificent, even for this director, and Ennio Morricone's score seems to be a conscious, clever imitation of Carpenter's own minimalist compositions. If pressed, I might complain that in this (as in most of his other films) Carpenter is too much of an aesthete, more interested in exercising his formal gifts than in saying anything. At the same time, I don't much care--Carpenter's rare dips into social commentary have been rather heavy-handed (see 'They Live' - just kidding, don't), and a perfectly scary film is still a perfectly scary film, deeper meaning or no. Enjoy. 10 out of 10.