365 Days. 365 Films.

Kurt Russell stars in John Carpenter’s classic, The Thing, about a team of scientists in the Antarctic who stumble across a shape-shifting alien. The alien inhabits and impersonates other life forms, and when it gets into the team’s base, they don’t know who to trust.

My first impression of this film, after watching Dark Star (see previous post), was that it might be a terrible film, despite the hype I’ve heard about it. It’s a terrible thing but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any John Carpenter films before this, even though he is one of the most famous directors and most talked about within his genre, so with Dark Star as my first Carpenter ‘hit’ I didn’t have very high hopes for this. I was, however, pleasantly surprised by both the direction and the special effects, which were way beyond their time.

I see this more as a monster movie than an alien movie, simply because of the way some of the special effects were done, and as with any monster movie, there are going to be some off moments, perhaps with the general believability. Nonetheless, I was genuinely scared in some moments, which surely means that since this has managed to stand the test of time, it has to be a five star classic!