Barf-bag splatter flick: Cult film but no classic.

Rating: 5/10 (19 August 2013)

John Carpenter's update of 'Who Goes There' and 'The Thing From Another World' came out 31 years ago to seemingly little fan-fare and even less critical reception. Steven Spielberg's 'E.T.' released the same year was a more popular take on the alien invasion story. Apparently people weren't too keen on seeing hideous creatures from outer space wreaking havoc in the same way.
Which is a shame, because 'The Thing' has a lot going for it. The opening sequence with a pair of Norwegians in a helicopter chasing down a sled dog, with the steady synthesized beat of the soundtrack, proves something eerie, and leads into a brilliant set up.
Unfortunately, once things go wrong and sh*t hits the fan, the paper thin characterizations of the cast come to the forefront. All of these 'scientists' and researchers on this base are rather bland, and the viewer never gets a sense of having known these guys. For example, in 'Alien', you feel like there is real camaraderie among the crew of the Nostromo, with subtle rivalries and edgy small talk providing so much detail and backstory to their characters (much of it ad libbed). But in 'The Thing', you never get a chance to hear these guys talk, or develop as interesting human beings at all. The most you see is them playing ping pong or getting high. The only insightful one is Kurt Russell's "Macready". Everyone else is simply fodder for the alien.
Carpenter seems to rely on mantaining the viewer's interest with the next highly inventive, but over the top special effects gore scene. Some say that "the less you see, the more frightening it is". Well someone forgot to tell Carpenter this on set, because each creature appearance is gooier and more in-your-face than the last. Even worse is the concept of the shape-shifting alien itself. It seemingly has the ability to transform into whatever shape with whatever powers it wants. A lot of it seems to depend on the amount of material (people) it absorbs, but in some cases the survival of the characters seems entirely arbitrary and not down to the rules that should have been established in the beginning. The main concept is that each piece of the alien is a living whole. But the film doesn't account for the idea that even the tiniest, invisible molecules that float through the air are part alien. And if the alien transmits itself through bodily fluids, why can't it just breathe onto someone and absorb them that way.
Because of this and the weakly written roles, the atmosphere of paranoia and claustrophobia that should be developing is instead undercooked, and leads to many of the characters going crazy and acting unrealistically way too soon.
It's literally only 10 minutes into the assimilation process, when one key scientist character realizes that mankind would be doomed within a year of the alien reaching the mainland. So what does he do? Round everyone up like a sensible person and try to weed out the alien? No, he suddenly destroys the radio and the helicopter, therefore dooming his companions to be trapped on a remote base with an enemy they can't see. Oh, and he tries to kill them all.
Of course, the alien isn't too smart either. Rather than laying low and maintaining its disguise, it would rather transform at the most inopportune moments to get itself destroyed.
Honestly, the film has little depth to its story or plot, and is really just a B-grade slasher flick, like Carpenter's last film 'Halloween'. With characters that seemingly want to die, how else could you describe it?