The Thing (1982)

Waaay late to the party on this one; I've owned The Thing on BluRay for about two years, but I only finally got around to watching it last night, after seeing a bunch of people on Twitter talking about it in relation to an allegedly-anachronistic reference in the Netflix show Stranger Things.

It's been a journey.

Anyway, we watched it, and #controversialopinion time: The Thing isn't really that great.

There's a great idea in there - an isolated location where a shapeshifting alien could have taken the place of any of the characters is rife with opportunities for tension. The big problem I think The Thing has, though, is it's less interested in the tension than it is with the gruesome possibilties of alien shapeshifting.

The alien creature repeatedly tears itself apart, spewing blood and tentacles, new appendages and mouths violently bursting out of every available surface, all in overlong, well-lit shots that remove any real sense of mystery. The alien in Alien is as scary as it is - in part, at least - because you never really see it, and the glimpses you get, blurry in the background, of a tail or an arm are enough - it's there, the unseen thing in the dark, lurking out there and waiting to grab you the moment your back is turned.

In contrast, pacing and tension in The Thing go out the window as soon as the animatronics get involved - the Thing gets as much screen time as Kurt Russel, flailing comically around while human characters scream in the foreground, making no attempt to escape or fire the flamethrowers they're holding.

Maybe lead with this next time.

In fact, The Thing is at its best when the creature's alien form is nowhere to be seen; when it's stalking the corridors slowly as a dog, or in the quiet moments when you can feel trust between characters eroding. It's hampered a little in that regard by a clunky and cliché-riddled script, taking every cue out of the Teenagers' Guide to Horror Locations. "We shouldn't leave anyone alone - let's split up!"

I dunno; maybe if I'd watched it at the more-formative teenage stage (the point when most seem to have developed an affection for it) The Thing would have had a greater impact. It's always tricky watching old movies through a modern lens, but I find it hard to give this a pass when Alien came out 3 years earlier.

I find it all the more frustrating because of that great idea buried in the ice - one that, with something as simple as a more agressive edit, and less gleeful pride in the monsters they'd made, could have been as scary and tense as I really wanted The Thing to be.