The Thing
1982
🎯 Verdict
✍️ Full Review
As a huge admirer of John Campbell's short story Who Goes There? which was a pioneering work on the horror and palpable dread of a groundbreaking concept in the history of Sci-Fi literature, I am a little bit disappointed given all the popularity behind this mid 80s John Carpenter adaptation. Carpenter does the most Carpenter thing and converts this science fiction story about a sort of shapeshifting otherworldly monster which excels at completely blending itself in into a body horror and in doing so, stripped the foundational traits of the supposed extraterrestrial entity. While in the source material, the threat was really subtle and it never beat one over the head by its terrifying presence nor did it lurk in shadows waiting to pounce rather the threat was invisible for the most part. It's only when the effects of its functionalities get shown, it crowns its head and eyes and tentacles and whatnot. If the monster had remained ever present on the pages, that essence of unknowing as well as the suspense around its host would have been left more to be desired. The Thing exactly goes on the opposite route by choosing a much sensational body horror style of subgenre. It becomes a zombie apocalypse survival movie where even the more analytic academic characters were turned into cowboys, let alone some of the absent ones. Despite the fact that the set designs, cinematography and the eerie yet loud music choice by Ennio Morricone tried to stretch the spirit of the film so as to maintain it as close to the original material, the principal element of the plot felt like it got tainted to a degree by leaning too much into a grotesque nature of survivability of the new species (or should I say the older one) against us humans by kickass weaponry and too much torching and explosions rather than what it should have gone for; an approach of designing terror by embracing the unknown and building suspense around it like a whodunit.