Were not getting out of here alive, and neither is that "Thing"

Rating: 8/10 (4 July 2005)

***SPOILERS*** As the film "The Thing" opens we see this sled dog trudging through the vast Antarctic wasteland of ice and snow being chased by a helicopter. Opening fire on the dog the Norwegian pilot, Larry J. Franco, seems to be terribly agitated at the dog escaping his rifle fire and then opens up a grenade canister and throws it at the fleeing canine.
After what seems like forever the dog reaches the US scientific outpost #31 and as the men stationed there run out to see what's happening the pilot starts shooting and throwing grenades all over the place like a man gone insane. He's then shot and killed by Garry, Donald Moffat, after the crazed pilot earlier ended up accidentally blowing up his helicopter with a loose grenades.
Finding a partly burned map of the outpost that the dead pilot came from Dr. Copper, Richard A. Dysart, together with US Army helicopter pilot MacReady, Kurt Russell, fly out to the place only to find it burnt-out with everyone there frozen or burned to death. By MacReady and Dr, Copper taking back one of the dead bodies to be examined they brought,together with the runaway dog that was already taken into in the US encampment,into play one of the most hideous monsters that was ever put into a motion picture. A monster that laid dormant for tens of thousands of years until the Norwegian Antarctic expedition dug it out of the ice and inadvertently released it. A horror that within three years could very will wipe out the entire human race by first replicating and then destroying it.
Unlike the original 1951 movie "The Thing from another World" the John Carpanter directed films storyline follows very closely the famous 1938 Sci-Fi short story "Who Goes There" by John W. Campball that both films were based on. Surviving through the process of replicating itself in it's host body "The Thing", after wiping out the Norwegian outpost, turned itself into a sled dog and then ended up getting into the US base #31.
At the base "The Thing" started to take over the bodies of first the sled dog and then the men stationed there by initially infecting them in order to enter their system. Then, like an unending row of domino's, "The Thing" goes from one person to another until "It" destroyed every living thing, human animal and plant, on earth.
Looking something like a cross between a giant spider and octopus "The Thing", when it was in it's natural state, looked like a nightmare that came straight out of hell. But when it infected and took over someone on the base, and hid itself inside the persons body, it acted perfectly normal and human until the opportunity presented itself for "It" to strike again. It was only too late that the US military men and scientists at the base-camp began to realize that once "The Thing" got into their camp the only way that it could be stopped was for them to destroy everything living that it came in contact with, the entire base-camp with them along with it. Not making the same mistake that the Norwegians did by unknowingly allowing it enter their encampment and then later escape, after wiping them out, and continue it's murderous rampage on earth.
With the fires that were started by him and his men, battling "The Thing", slowly burning themselves out MacReady and Childs,Keith David, the last two survivors of this inferno wait for the bitter minus 100 degree Antarctic winter to set in and thus put them out of there miseries. Shearing a bottle of R&B whiskey to numb their senses they both sit and wait for the end to come knowing that with their actions they put an end to "The Thing" and it's ability to use them to farther it's demonic goal in destroying all of mankind.