The Movie Doctor: Monster-Movie Month Review: "The Thing"

Monster-Movie Month Review: “The Thing”

To continue my Monster-Movie Month series for October I finally saw one of the most influential and talked about monster films every made John Carpenter’s The Thing. I had always heard amazing things about this movie and I finally checked it out last week. It really blew my mind.

The Thing takes place somewhere in the Antarctic where a group of scientists ,who are stranded at there base until Spring, encounter a monstrous beast that comes from another nearby camp. The beast can take form of any human being or animal making extremely difficult to find and kill. Paranoia strikes the crew where anyone at anytime could be the monster resulting in one of the most intense experiences I have ever had watching a horror film.

This is definetly one of the best monster movies ever made. The monster itself is one of the most gruesome creatures ever created for cinema. All the sequences with the thing made my jaw drop. I watched the movie at night with the lights off to increase the effect and it definetly gave me chills. One thing that I noticed right off the bat about the monster was that the film used no CGI. It was all special effects and make-up. That fact alone really blew my mind. Even by today’s standards it left me shocked at the monster’s many appearances. There is a sequence that the monster’s head detaches from it’s body then grows pairs of legs and starts walking away. It is one of the most mesmerizing scenes in horror film history.

All the cast’s performances were wonderful and of course Kurt Russell was a bad-ass as usual. The whole team really played all there parts well each one of them displaying there own unique paranoia as the film goes on. The cast really creates that sense of paranoia that gives the whole movie a very intense atmosphere. That paranoia is instilled into the movie until the ending credits where you don’t even know what happens.

It is an amazing Monster movie that I would highly recommend to Horror fans. There is a prequel on it’s way and all I have to say is that they have huge shoes to fill.