John Carpenter's homage to the B monster movies

Rating: 8/10 (7 July 2008)

I saw this movie many many years ago on TV and hadn't seen it for a while. It was on TV again last night and decided I should give it another go. I am very glad I did because it is a tremendously entertaining horror movie from the master of the genre John Carpenter. The movie concerns a bunch of research scientists who investigate an isolated place and find some kind of deformed creature and take it for research hoping to gain recognition for their discovery. What they don't know however is that the creature is very much alive and it's not long before it starts taking over their bodies. It is then upto the crew to decide which one of them has been taken over by the creature by taking a series of tests cue bags of tension. This could have been simply awesome but it ends up being just great. The problem is not the script or the climax but the fact that it bears quite a bit of resemblance to Alien(my favourite horror movie). For example in The Thing the scene where The Thing comes out of one the scientists body is similar to that famous John Hurt scene in Alien. One interesting point is that in John Carpenter's Halloween the original version of The Thing is playing in the background. Despite it's minor flaws The Thing is a pretty great monster movie and one of the best horror movies of the 80's.