Carpenter's best

Rating: 9/10 (11 August 2004)

An austere fantasy about a U.S. government research team stationed in the desolate Antarctic tundra, visited by an indestructible shape-shifting alien, John Carpenter's remake of Howard Hawks's The Thing from Another World methodically deconstruct the human psyche under stress while emphasizing the ineffectuality of solidarity when faced with a tactile existential crisis.
The protean form of the eponymous 10,000 year-old extraterrestrial provides a strong ideological thrust as it assimilates the bodies of the crew at random, facilitating a convincingly febrile cocoon of paranoia, quarantine, and primitive self-preservation. Ostensibly an homage to '50s creature features, The Thing owes more to the social allegory of Romero's Dead Trilogy and the abstract techno/corporeal concerns of Cronenbergian cinema, which was coming into its own around the same time (1982). This would mark the third in a handful of starring roles for Kurt Russell in Carpenter-directed films. His portrayal of the vulnerable lone hero (the hero only inasmuch as he commands the subjective space) acting decidedly un-heroically—a staple for Carpenter, who seems to endeavor a refashioning of the Western in withered, technologically compromised dystopias—is effective and relatable.
Carpenter makes masterful use of the Panavision format—often compressing the dozen or so supporting characters into the same frame—filling the space with ominous peripheral details, mounting the tension almost subliminally. Which is not to say that it is wholly reliant on silence and intimation for its impact. Rob Bottin's makeup work on the tirelessly regenerating alien has been The Thing's most enduring virtue, and not without reason: whether adding strange appendages to The Thing (the head of a victim emerging from a shoulder, attached to a long, spiraling neck) or having it suddenly burst through a carrier's tremulous visage, Bottin capitalizes on the concept of a mysterious, replicating evil in the most terrifyingly innovative ways.
Not to be outdone, Ennio Morricone provides a repetitive, quietly harrowing score that sounds like the end of the world. And it is thus with The Thing, a vision of humanity scorned, burning itself bare at both ends, but in conception a work of paradoxical solidarity, craftsmen at the top of their game working toward a uniform purpose. Sometimes it's good to be at odds with the screenplay.