More than horror, an interesting study

Rating: 9/10 (20 June 2004)

Okay, it makes me shudder to say such cheesy things, but this movie is less a horror movie (sorry Carpenter) than a "study in fear." Phew, pretentious, I know, but it's the simplest way to describe it. By fear I mean the fear each of the characters is experiencing, not necessarily the audience's fear (although this *is* a scary movie). As in a lot of Carpenter's movies, the premise and tone is very Lovecraftian, which involves a lot of hinting at horrors past, and horrors to come.
The story is adapted from a short narrative called Who Goes There? that was made into a movie by Hawks in the fifties (I have not been able to find a copy of Who Goes There? but Carpenter's version is supposedly more faithful to the original concept). The idea is that a creature has gotten into an arctic research station and is able to become any other organism there, whether dog, human, or something kinda between the two. That's all you need to know. We watch as the men at the station try to come to grips with their situation, controlling their fear while trying to decide which one of them is the creature, and most importantly, how to kill it so it doesn't reach civilization and conquer Earth. It's a light-hearted romp for both young and old.