The Thing

Thirty years after Nyby and Hawks’ “The Thing from Another World” (1951), the second film adaptation of John Wood Campbell Jr.’s short story “Who Goes There?” (1938) serves as a powerful launching pad for the breathtaking “Apocalypse Trilogy” – the absolute pinnacle of John Carpenter’s filmography.

The break with the past movie is clear and intentional. While in the 1951 film the alien menace (or the communist one, if you want to interpret the film from a historical point of view) served as a suitable element to unite the group, here the reintroduction of the alien’s shapeshifting nature – drawn from the literary source but ignored in the Nyby version – provokes a critical breakdown of interpersonal relations (“Nobody trusts anybody now… and we’re all very tired“).

This plot point serves as fertile ground for a bitter reflection on themes related to identity and trust, themes cogently developed against a backdrop of clear-eyed pessimism. In line with the skeptical, disillusioned philosophies of the twentieth century, Carpenter rejects any sort of panlogism in favor of the conviction that any rationality in our world, particularly when it comes to human beings, is merely an illusory veil that quickly vanishes into thin air the moment some extraordinary stimulus intrudes into everyday life.

At any rate, reality conceals incomparable monstrosities, many of which tend to lodge directly in the human soul. There’s no escape: faith is a devious deception (as we’ll see in the later “Prince of Darkness”, 1987), while science reveals streaks of cosmic horror which it then proves impotent against (it’s no accident that the American team’s pathologist, Dr. Blair, is the first to realize the gravity of the situation and quickly goes berserk, forcing the others to lock him up in a tool shed).

On a technical level, Carpenter’s direction, simple and free of pointless affectations, effectively conveys the sense of claustrophobia and tension enveloping the entire story (the scene where MacReady tests the blood to determine who’s still human is textbook suspense). Convincing performances by an all-male cast, the great Kurt Russell is particularly outstanding. The film is ably enhanced by both Ennio Morricone’s haunting soundtrack which definitely suits Carpenter’s style, as well as Rob Bottin and Stan Wilson’s chilling practical SFX (at the very least, we would cite the spider-head, the dog’s transformation, and the defibrillation scene).

Box-office bomb. Apparently put off by such a radically skeptical take on human behavior, the public at the time headed “en masse” to more inviting shores, embracing an unrealistic “made in Spielbergland” optimism. In the US market, “The Thing” managed to pull in only $19.6 million in ticket sales, barely exceeding its $15 million budget. An undeserved semi-flop for an absolute masterpiece of cinema history.