On Tuesday night, I watched The Thing, directed by John Carpenter. It had been on my “to-watch” list for a while, and I am ashamed I waited so long to see it.
The story revolves around an isolated, American Antarctic team that come into contact with… the Thing, after it is chased to them by the remnants of a Norwegian team. This Thing is in the form of a dog from the team from Norway, and had previously obliterated that team. The two Norwegians conveniently died, leaving the Americans without a clue as to what is now in their midst.
Very quickly, the team sees that this dog is something monstrous, as it proceeds to attempt to absorb their dogs. It is ghastly, gross, and consists of some of the best monster effects I’ve ever seen. Throughout the movie, the team is busy trying to figure out which of their members have been infected by the Thing, turning on each other while subsequently being attacked by the creature. In all the action, the main characters find out that the Thing is actually an alien that crash landed hundreds-of-thousands of years ago - being preserved in the ice of the continent - and can absorb the cells of any other creature and create a perfect copy; imitation happens in about 2 to 10 minutes.
The end of the movie is a cliffhanger, but the action throughout is in a constant ebb and flow in a crescendo of fire, ice, and gooey monster bits. Oh, and spider heads. The frikken monsters can fall apart into many monsters. There is a shocker as well in that killing the Things doesn’t always leave them dead. Is any of this sounding familiar yet?
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