What can you say about a horror movie that's made history and still stands up today as a special-effects extravaganza? See it again! Now!!!

Rating: 10/10 (11 October 2013)

John Carpenter's "The Thing" is a legendary movie. For me, it's a movie that gets better with each viewing and still stands up today over 30 years later as a marvel of atmosphere, special effects and existential dread. Whether intentional or through sheer luck, or perhaps an unlikely combination of both, the filmmakers who made this incredible opus have made one of the few greatest monster movies of all time that not only delivers the grisly goods of gory kills and nightmarish creatures but even more importantly is so meticulously paced and plotted with such vivid characterization of seemingly ordinary men isolated and trapped in a nightmarish wasteland that it naturalistically questions, perhaps without even meaning to, the nature of trust, identity, and the extent of human relationships on a professional and personal level based purely on the instinct to preserve the idea of "self" as the truest form of survival. This is not just a survival movie where the characters will do anything to live, including compromising their own integrity at the expense of others like so many shallow modernistic survival horror movies have done lately in order to seemingly justify extreme and seemingly sociopathic behavior. No, "The Thing" questions at what point does a decent caring person have to act on their own, perhaps even against the group, for not only the sake of his/her own good but for the good of the group as well to avoid being destroyed by the very human collective paranoia and hysteria that may be even more insane and monstrous than the thing causing it. In a group where trust has broken down because anyone could be a monster the question becomes not who has the right to assume authority but who will be authoritative enough over themselves to take a leap of faith in trusting someone who might lead them to their destruction. Is the greatest feat of "self" deciding to resist the potentially compromised authority of another person or deciding to take a leap of faith by submitting one's trust and ultimately one's will to someone who may prevent you from destroying yourself and others in a fit of fear and paranoia? These are the kind of ideas and themes explored in John Carpenter's "The Thing" and add to that mind-blowing special effects that put current CGI to shame even today and you've got an unique unrivaled masterpiece that is as deep and terrifying as it is dazzling.
I love this movie so much I own two copies of it on DVD just in case one of them bunks out all of a sudden.
So there.