' Trust's a hard thing to come by these days...'

Rating: 10/10 (23 May 2006)

Winter, Antartica. A group of scientists and pilots are stationed in a US observation post. With the arrival of a seemingly insane Norweigen helicopter crew shooting wildly at a fleeing husky dog the film starts with violence. The dog runs in to the American base prompting the hysterical rifleman to chase after him, firing blindly. Garry the base officer shoots and kills him. After trying to radio out for advice on how to proceed the base radio operator 'Windows' tells them he has been getting nothing but static for two weeks. Concerned at this crews seemingly randomly insane behaviour, Dr Copper wants to check on the Norweigen crew at their base in case anyone else is hurt, recruiting helicoper pilot McReady to shuttle him. The Norweigen base is destroyed, decimated by fire. Searching the ruins they see the grisly sight of a man who has cut his throat and wrists in an apparent suicide..what happened here to make a man do this to himself. Could they have all gone crazy out here in the frozen wilderness?. Outside they come across what appears to be the burnt remains of several men , they wrap it up and take it back for examination. Later Fuchs the dog handler takes the dog which has been wandering aimlessly about the base and puts it with the other huskies. Checking on the animal later to see how it is settling in he is confronted with something out of a nightmare..something is killing the dogs . The men spring in to action and use a flamethrower on the monster they find, but not before it cleaves off a part of itself and disappears through the roof of the dog shed. Blair the biologist does an autopsy of the dogs mangled remains and makes a horrific discovery. The dogs were not being attacked they were being taken over by this creature, and then imitated. After further research in to the imitations capabilities Blair comes to the stark conclusion ..if one single cell of this imitator reaches a populated area in 27,000 hours it will have imitated the entire population of the earth. And there is further bad news, there is a 75% chance that one or more members of the crew have now been imitated. With this realisation paranoia descends on the crew as they realise this alien can imitate anyone of them perfectly and no one would know until it is too late. With trust gone, how will the men survive ?.
Part of John Carpenters 'Apocolypse Trilogy' ( the other two being; In The Mouth Of Madness and Escape From L.A) The Thing is his masterwork. A brilliant adaptation of sci-fi short story 'Who Goes There?'. Focusing on the paranoia of an enclosed group who are isolated from civilisation and the authoritys by their environment. And this is interesting, when the alien(s) can look like anybody who can you trust?. Certainly not the head of the base Garry ( brilliantly played by the reliable Donald Moffat) who the group begin to suspect when the blood is contaminated. There are no square jawed heroics in this bleak film, the characters are all ordinary men thrust in to a terrifying situation with a creature they have no control over. A being who lives by taking over, then imitating others. Ruthless decisions are made and made quickly. McReady is the loner alcoholic pilot who takes control when others refuse it. But we see he is doing this for one reason only- to protect his own hide. When push comes to shove ( and it does) Mcready is more than willing to kill any of his co-workers if he suspects one of them is a Thing. The Thing is clever and manipulative and uses the mens suspicion of each other to divide them, getting them alone so it can attack and imitate.. The acting in this movie is excellent, all the actors working at the peak of their powers to create realistic , physical characters with all their flaws and pettiness. Kurt Russell turns in one of his best performances as the pilot McReady a man who is not to be crossed when the chips are down. The ending is bleak and ambiguous. With the fires dying down and the temperature dropping Childs and McReady seemed fated to die. Is one of them an imitation?. This film will have you talking afterwards, would we all react the same in similar situations, turning on each other?. This remains my favourite John Carpenter movie and one of my favourite films of all time.