The Thing

"Master of horror" John Carpenter's "The Thing" tells the story of an isolated Antarctic research team, who happen upon an otherworldly being. At first, the Thing (and I capitalize it, because it's capitalized in the closed captioning every time the word is spoken) is concealed in the guise of a husky, and is being chased by some Norwegians in a helicopter. At this point, we don't know what's going on, so we can only assume that something's either up with the dog or with the people chasing it. It's not until later that the husky reveals itself, once it is left alone with the other huskies. There, it rips open and tries to devour/become all of the other dogs. This is the kind of gor-ror that makes up the more exciting scenes of the movie.

For the record, the dog was probably my favourite actor in the movie. I mean that quite seriously, and not as a knock to Kurt Russell and co. The dog, named Jed, who later went on to play White Fang in 1991, seemed intelligent beyond itself, including appearing tentative when entering the cage with the other huskies. Bravo, Jed.

At first I was nervous that the location of the film would end up being its gimmick. Set in the frozen wasteland of the southernmost continent, one of the early images of the film is a body, whose blood has frozen while it falls from the corpse's slit throat. While visually intriguing, I was hoping that this would not be the one trick that would be repeated over and over again. Instead, we got a different one.

Since the creature can perfectly imitate other beings, we immediately begin to wonder if one of the members of the research team is also a Thing. And, just in case we missed the possibility, one of the scientists runs a computer scenario, which tell us, in full, grammatically proper sentences, that there is a 75% chance that this has already occured. It also tells us that, if left unchecked, the Things would take over the Earth in 27,000 hours. Curious, I figured out what that meant, and came to 3 years and 10 days. And who said that you never use long division in the real world? As it turns out, more than one person has been taken over or copied or however it works, and their reveals and subsequent torchings at the hands of Kurt Russell make up the few, enjoyable scenes.

Speaking of Kurt Russell, his character is the helicopter pilot who, for some reason, commands the respect of everyone else at the station. Doctors, security, and busboys alike bow down before his unquestioned leadership. As soon as the bad starts to go down, he's the one who steps up and seems to know what to do, despite his admitted lack of understanding of the situation. He makes the tough calls and takes charge, for no apparent reason other than that he's Kurt Russell, and, as the biggest star, has earned that right.

A word or two about the alien itself: I cannot decide whether or not I like this creature as a villain. I like its shape-shifting nature, and the freakshow way that it reveals itself, but it doesn't do so in any kind of comprehensible way. For starters, there are tentacles everywhere, constantly fluttering around. Also, without an actual familiar appearance, it just seems to be a frantic mess of whatever flesh happens to be around at the time. It's hard to follow, and hard to understand, which, I guess, is what is supposed to make it unsettling. Instead, I was more intrigued.

Top it all off with an ambiguous ending, following a disappointing climax, and you've got "The Thing," a cool, if not entirely engaging sci-fi suspense that plays its tricks well, but does little else.

Rating: 3.25 stars