The following review I decided to write to rectify what I perceived to be an injustice done to the movie by countless reviews since its release.

John Carpenter’s The Thing was released in 1982 and is based on the story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. An alien being, capable of absorbing and mimicking other life forms, crashes on earth during the ice-ridden Pleistocene epoch over 100,000 years ago. The story centers on a group of American scientists operating in the frigid realms of Antarctica, who eventually must contend with the creature for their existence hitherto known. Because the alien can mimic any life form, and the crew eventually learns of this reality, the story is riddled with paranoia and fear tinged with the oppressiveness of utter solitude.

Self-preservation and the survival instinct predominate in the minds of the group’s members, reinforced by a vague appreciation for the continued existence of the other members of the group as human beings. And so, while the most eloquent baseness of human nature overwhelms any pretense to altruism, there remains collective cognizance of the individual’s increased chance of survival should other members of the group survive the absorptive onslaught of the creature.

As a movie, The Thing is a writhing mass of biological extremities. Humanity is pitted against a creature so unbelievably alien that it has no true form. Presumably, the alien acquires and stores the genetic information of whatever creatures it absorbs, and so could recall any portion of the genetic information thereof to replicate a phenotypic characteristic of its choosing. Thus, we see the creature instantiated into pseudo-human, pseudo-arachnid, canine and vaguely reptilian forms (all of which are collectively represented at the end). In the famous dog kennel scene, the creature mutates into a heavy slab of organic matter with eyes, tentacles, and a predatory alien plant.

Carpenter refuses to indulge his audience in humor, and he is pitiless in his execution of sustained seriousness coupled with the direst manifestations of human nature. For this reason alone, The Thing is an excellent movie, and is all the more believable because of it. There are no Will Smiths to dilute the movie with cheesy recitations of past sci-fi movie lines (“Now that’s what I call a close encounter…”), nor must we suffer through some over-arching anthropocentric theme of humanity’s triumph over an aberration of nature. Man is a competitor for existence, and his success is not pre-ordained.

Naturally, most viewers will sympathize with the humans, but I found my emotions engaged primarily with the creature itself. Its overwhelming and undeniable proclivity to absorb and consume life reflects humanity on a microcosmic scale. Collectively, humanity as a species indulges in just that, while continuing as individuals to tout moral precepts. I had hoped the creature would triumph, if only because of its uniqueness and the utter blandness of the humans with which it had to contend. If the movie was in any way disappointing for me, it was for that reason alone and no other.

Malachi Martin

July 30, 2002

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