This week’s horror 80’s horror flick, John Carpenter’s THE THING was a tough thing for me to watch. The premise of an alien frozen in the Arctic warming enough to take over the bodies of human and animal is frightening. One of the most frightening aspects of the movie as the cast had no way of know who was human and who was the alien thingy.
I watched this movie over a week ago, and it has taken me this long to say a few words. Perhaps, I am having difficulty pinpointing what I am so “meh” about? Overall, I think I was bored. The pacing of the movie was slow. And I think at this point in the term, we’ve seen all these monster and horror tropes already.
The men stationed up in the ice are there for some unknown reason (did the movie ever say?). They are isolated, and the story did well at creating a claustrophobic feel. Human’s make stupid deadly choices. No way anyone was getting away from the horror—ala “Aliens.”
How did this THING thaw out anyway? The slain Norwegian’s sported iced bloodcicles! So these monsters can re-animate when it gets warm—that feels reminiscent of World War Z’s zombies. Beware of spring.
We watched the same human response to horrific situations: paranoia (albeit not without warrant in this story), bickering, and turning on each other—“The Night of the Living Dead.” As with many movies, we already viewed, for me, there was little character identification. I felt ambiguous toward them—not worried, or rooting for their success. The closest I’ve come to care about any of the movie characters were in American Werewolf in London as I wanted to see David beat this werewolf thing, and still felt annoyed his parents didn’t show up at the hospital. But the rest of the movie—nothing. No emotional pull.
Although, many of these classic horror movies may work in technical ways. Even with horrific monsters, they fail in the emotional arena. Hubs said this was the best of the movies we’ve watched so far…I can’t agree. I enjoyed American Werewolf more. “The Thing” felt distant. It was terrible. It had great special effects for a 1982 film. I suspect this story would have been really effective in print. But on film, visually, being inside the character’s mind, it lacked something.
The dogs—those poor beautiful animals—I felt for the dogs. Everyone else, I was hoping the alien would just eat em already so we could be done with it. That’s becoming a recurrent feeling these days, probably not a good sign.
Monster Movie: The THING is, I couldn’t quite get into THE THING
When watching movies, you have to consider what their target audience is, and you are not the target audience for the movie THE THING. When I was a very young adult living in the 80’s, this was a very scary movie. As an older adult I find it a little too predictable at times. The Thing was made for easy-to-scare young people as was the movie ALIEN. And just like THE THING, as a very young man when I first watched ALIEN, it scared me to death, but as an older adult, it was completely fake and totally unrealistic to me. I outgrew the target audience for those kinds of movies; there are no more horror movies that scare me anymore.
Some things are not necessary for a plot to work. In the 80’s and in America, most people were very familiar with Antarctic research stations so they needed no explanation. What did they research? It varies all over the place from season to season as it still does today. But again, it isn’t necessary to know what research they are conducting for the plot to work.
I think you should rewatch this movie. The Thing was thawed out by the Norwegians when they dug it up and took it to their base. They had no idea it wasn’t dead nor that it could shapeshift into anything living until after they thawed it out, same way as the Americans found out.
All horror movies are very emotional but they basically appeal to only one emotion: fear. If you want a range of emotions, watch a romance and pray that it was written and directed by females.
You made a great point here! I am not the intended target audience, and that makes a HUGE difference. There are not many movies that scare me these days either. Although, I might venture to guess that movies with human psycho monsters would likely terrify me!