Watch The Thing!
Especially if you haven't seen it before. Don't read a single thing I've said, go into the movie with absolutely no knowledge. It's the best way to see it.
You know there are plenty of good reasons you don't just put a random stray dog in the same holding pin is all your other dogs.
Maybe it has a disease, perhaps it's unsociable or aggressive towards your dogs. Maybe the other dogs are too aggressive towards it. Or maybe, just maybe it's an interdimensional demon* from beyond the stars who's warped itself into looking like a dog as to infiltrate your society.
The Thing might just be my favourite horror film. It's entertaining, it's suspenseful and it's absolutely dreadfully horrifying.
Even on a second or third watching. In fact it becomes an entirely different film. When you watch this for the first time you're as in the dark as the people in that Arctic station.
You have no idea what's going on and if you're anything like me you're absolutely baffled as to why a bunch of Norwegians are trying to kill a cute fluffy looking dog.
But then the watching it a second time you're sitting there thinking; ''Oh my God if only they could destroy that horrible monster of a being and save everybody from a grimm and untimely demise.''
I get two kinds of fear when watching this film. The first is one of the unknown the confused and the baffled. You're sitting on the edge of your seat slightly paranoid. What's going to come next? And it becomes all the more scary when you realise that everyone is a potential suspect.
The second feeling is more dread than fear. As your stomach twist into a knot knowing the eventual outcome of this most putrid situation. It's that horrible not of a feeling too, the one that I'm pretty sure is contributing to a future stomach cancer that will inevitably kill me in the long run. There's a catchy slogan for a film,
It's so damn good that it'll never really kill you in a painful and unsuspecting way.
On top of having one of the best premise for a horror film. It also has some of the best effects, acting and sound design. The cinematography (as it's called) is on Full display here. And it's some of the best you'll ever see out of a John Carpenter movie or indeed any film.
The musical scores among some of the best as well. I do hesitate it calling it the best film soundtrack though, John Carpenter soundtracks are always a bit subdued and Atmospheric. You're never meant to really be thinking about the music while the actual film is going on.
That's the beauty of it, it's made to enhance the film not distract you from it.
And everyone's character acts fairly well too. They act both ignorant but intelligent, you never sit there scratching your head thinking; ''Why would they do that?'' in a really stupid way.
They make mistakes, but the kind of mistakes you'd expect people to make in a grim situation. Some people might debate why would you let the creature thaw out at the beginning, or why bring back that warped human looking skeleton? Indeed this is a bit of a complexion problem, until you consider that these are scientist and they might consider it a type of obligation to find out what it is.
I think it also helps that this movie came out when it did. It was released at a time when film was just starting to look realistic, that is to say you didn't think people are standing in a stage or on some prop somewhere. Everything looks like it was functioning and lived in. It was part of a real world filled with real people. It's a problem you couldn't get around in earlier films in the times before the mid 60s. Even the best looking movies always had a Hollywood-isk feel to them. And films that started coming out in the mid-2000s and onwards just look to clean. The creation of better cameras, better capturing software and the Advent and abundant use of CGI has taken away from the realistic angle the films from the mid-60s up to the 90s**. Now everything's so clean and so polished that it looks almost fake again. As if people are living in the world better than the one we live in.
Of course there's that famous ending we are not entirely sure if the monster is dead. And it's the one part of the movie that doesn't change from the first viewing to the last. You're always left with that aching question, did they kill the Thing?
I also love just how mysterious everything is too. You never find out anything about the alien. You don't know if it arrived on the ship proper, (although it's presumed it did) You never find out what a truly looks like, or what its history was. All we know is that it's a strange organism that can mutate make itself look like other organisms and simultaneously infect them at the same time. In a way it's like the rabies vaccine mutated with Mystique from the X-Men.
Perhaps the greatest thing about this movie is the human interaction. Everyone become so paranoid so insecure about one another but they begin lashing out and attacking one another without even knowing if they're infected to begin with.
But it's brilliant in a way, the same kind of human interaction comes up in Zombie films as well. But the difference there is that you learn as time goes on that the humans are more dangerous than the zombies ever could be.
And that's not the case here, no matter how destructive these people get to one another they all know in the back of their heads that this creature is still more dangerous more concerning that any of their Petty squabbles. But they can't grow beyond that anyways, they have to live with both the fear of themselves and the fear of the creature simultaneously.
Of course if none of that convinces you that this movies any good it's pacing is fantastic and it has just enough action to keep you entertained. The creature effects are phenomenal and they're used sparingly to.
It's also interesting to note that unlike other alien creature movies such as, well. ''Alien'' the monster in this is incredibly well-lit sometimes and still looks creepy.
This film is as close to perfect as you can get.
And it's just so perfectly done. I've tried comparing it to other movies that I love is well. Rather that be Superman, Alien, Conan the Barbarian or even a film like Doctor Strange Love.
But all these movies have visible flaws that are easy to see and that you can easily pick a part if you want to. ''The Thing'' really avoids most of this. Any flaws in this film are so mynute that they don't really take away from the overall experience.
So is it the perfect horror movie?
No.
There is no perfect horror film.
A part of me is tempted to call it that, but then I realized the unfairness of that. To call this a perfect horror movie is to say that a movie like ''The Wicker man'' is below it. And it's not, it's a different type of experience. And really that's the way we should look at horror (and all other genres for that matter but a specially horror.)
Still if I use the rating system (which I don't) I would call this a 10 out of 10 movie. But I don't use that type of rating because screw those numbers.
So instead this film is a Fettuccine Alfredo with assorted Sushi as a side dish.
*There's no proof that it's interdimensional or that it's a demon. But it sounded really good when I was writing it out so I just kind of stuck with it.
**In fairness I think this problem started in the mid to late 80s. And that era of absolute realism in films, to look like a place you could actually sit in only really existed from about say 65 up to maybe 85. I don't know maybe it's a biased on my part and I'm just trying to make excuses for what is one of my favorite times in film history.
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