If you think the original is good, you've got another "Thing" coming...

Rating: 9/10 (3 May 2018)

In "Night of the Living Dead" (spoiling paragraph), the lone survivor ended up being shot as randomly and mercilessly by a posse gunman who didn't even give him time to say "I'm not like them!". The guy looked like a racist asshole but we can ask ourselves if the emergency or the pressure were too big to take a chance. One of the most wicked aspects of John Carpenter's "Thing" is to make the gunman's point in a way that brilliantly betrays our own inclination to distrust.
It starts with a helicopter firing gun at a running sled dog in Antarctica, we can't sympathize with the shooter, and when the dog makes it to that camp, we're almost relieved. Then the helicopter lands, and the man with the rifle, a Norwegian, starts shooting again uttering incomprehensible words for the camp members, all American. Of course, he was warning them about the dog, but he didn't realize he was endangering himself and a bullet hit him before the realization. Garry (Donald Moffat) isn't your typical trigger happy guard but he didn't trust the Norwegian. This is distrust's establishing moment as the pattern-instinct that will drive the plot and command most actions.
Lack of trust or refusal to trust... the merit of John Carpenter is to have brilliantly exposed one of humanity's most detestable traits in a powerfully metaphorical story brilliantly dressed up as a horror movie but closer to the spirit of the original novel "Who Goes There?". Indeed, to call "The Thing" a remake is an insult, if anything this film highlights the limitations of its predecessor. While in the black-and-white film, the all-clean-cut American team had all their members sticking together against a clearly identified Frankenstein-like enemy, here, you'd better not watch the skies but anyone around you, which is enough to fuel the atmosphere with pure paranoid terror.
Literally, they had another "Thing" coming, the alien has no place to hide except for hidden organisms, which means dogs or eventually humans whose shape it can imitate and recreate. The original tag-line said "Man is the warmest place to hide" before it was stupidly changed to "The Ultimate Thing in Alien terror" milking on Ridley Scott's success while the film was a whole new experience by making humans the potential containers of the ugly creature. Carpenter reconciled between Scott and Romero's concepts with the background of the 1951 film more convincingly restored, and the result is both visually stunning and captivating. Even the cold and the solitude were powerfully rendered. Hell, even the dogs act well.
Yet the film was criticized for its overuse of gory effects. Personally, I thought they were so spectacular and effective they should have beaten "E.T." ("The Thing" wasn't even nominated) as if Spielberg reinvented the wheel after "Star Wars" or "Close Encounters". It's not just about the practical effects but the way the corpses and hybrid-versions of the Thing looked like real biological structures in their gruesome and grotesque way and pushed repulsiveness to eleven without undermining the realism. On the contrary, they made the original lose any credibility with its "man in suit" villain.
The film was also criticized for its lack of characterization and this is why I have to play the devil's advocate again. Granted Kurt Russell plays the bad-ass hero with the right intuitions and the other cast members seem to fulfill a few archetypes, there's never a moment where the acting feels unrealistic, everyone is aware that they are in a situation where splitting up is the worst option yet the turns of events always force them to split up causing the suspicions to reappear, it's not contrivance, it's brilliance in a twisted way.
And by the time Blair (an unrecognizable mustache-less Wilford Brimley) realized the apocalyptic implications of the Thing, it was too late, and even with a buddy-system, they couldn't trust each other under that eschatological pressure. It's easy to sit as viewers and be all analytical about it, but maybe some of us would have hidden in the safest place to avoid any contact, hence endangering ourselves even more. I think the film played it real enough so I could find it plausible... starting with defensive moves that enhance the danger and then strategies to sabotage the Thing's plan while leading to other tricky situations.
And everything leads to that sequence where Charles Hallahan's belly literally snatches Richard Dysart's arms and the head turns to a spider-like monster, this scene is delightfully hideous, so is its enthusiastic retelling in the "making of" film. We've reached the film's high point and it's immediately followed by the blood test; perhaps one of the most riveting and suspenseful moments from any horror movie. It's not just in the outcome but the way eyes' glances and death glares are exchanged and when you see this scene a second time, you realize that the "trusting" issue is the spice that makes the meal so delicious.
They don't want to trust each other but the most nightmarish aspect of their situation is that they must do it. And to close the "trusting" arc in the most satisfying way, you've got to love the final exchange between Russell and Keith David, when they realize that they've reached a point where trusting isn't an issue anymore and it's time to share a peace-pipe-like JB bottle.
That scene might echo the perception the film received when "E.T." was praised for its more friendly visitor and universal message; but retrospectively, "The Thing" has just as much depth, as strong visuals, and if not the box-office gross of "E.T.", it finally earned a wonderful afterlife elevating it among the classics of the genre... and deservedly so!