The Ultimate Paranoia Film

Rating: 10/10 (30 January 2003)

-This is an excellent example of quality horror cinema. Despite it's slightly cheesy title (although very appropriate), it is a truly amazing piece of work. It builds an eerie mood of isolation from society, creates believable characters with plausible relationships, and generates just enough gore to keep you near sickness, but not pushing the envelope. The gore is really a subtle fraction of the disturbance factor of the film. The real suspense/fear comes from not knowing who is human and who is an alien "Thing." This paranoid feeling added to the remoteness keeps this film terrifying even twenty years later. Although the graphics are somewhat dated, I find them more frightening then some of the available computer let downs of the late 90s and early new century (pitch black). When did Toy story become scary? I really like Kurt Russell in this film also. He creates this kind of "bad-boy" hero persona into his character that really makes you like him. The ending is also one of my favorite moving endings. Does it matter if the other guy is a "Thing" or not? This movie is a gripping, chilling, masterpiece, and I think contemporary horror film makers should all pay homage it.