The Thing (1982)
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 109m
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, A. Wilford Brimley, T. K. Carter, Richard Dysart
Synopsis:
The personnel at a scientific research centre in the Antarctic is contaminated by a virulent shape-changing alien organism which has wiped out their Norwegian neighbours.
Review:
Attracting much critical opprobrium at the time of its release, possibly from an understandable fatigue with this kind of visceral horror, the film is actually better than that, ground-breaking in its special effects, all achieved with mechanics and make-up, and nail-bitingly tense in its paranoid scenario. Not only an improvement on the original but Carpenter's best film since Assault on Precinct 13, or to put it another way his last good one. Emphatic freeze-frame fades punctuate and schematise the action, and British Columbian locations stand in convincingly for Antarctica. The film's apocalyptic narrative foreshadowed many a later film, besides recalling Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and each generation provides its own interpretation for the film's 'No one to trust' endgame, from the Red Scare to AIDS to Islamist terrorism.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 109m
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, A. Wilford Brimley, T. K. Carter, Richard Dysart
Synopsis:
The personnel at a scientific research centre in the Antarctic is contaminated by a virulent shape-changing alien organism which has wiped out their Norwegian neighbours.
Review:
Attracting much critical opprobrium at the time of its release, possibly from an understandable fatigue with this kind of visceral horror, the film is actually better than that, ground-breaking in its special effects, all achieved with mechanics and make-up, and nail-bitingly tense in its paranoid scenario. Not only an improvement on the original but Carpenter's best film since Assault on Precinct 13, or to put it another way his last good one. Emphatic freeze-frame fades punctuate and schematise the action, and British Columbian locations stand in convincingly for Antarctica. The film's apocalyptic narrative foreshadowed many a later film, besides recalling Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and each generation provides its own interpretation for the film's 'No one to trust' endgame, from the Red Scare to AIDS to Islamist terrorism.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 109m
Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, A. Wilford Brimley, T. K. Carter, Richard Dysart
Synopsis:
The personnel at a scientific research centre in the Antarctic is contaminated by a virulent shape-changing alien organism which has wiped out their Norwegian neighbours.
Review:
Attracting much critical opprobrium at the time of its release, possibly from an understandable fatigue with this kind of visceral horror, the film is actually better than that, ground-breaking in its special effects, all achieved with mechanics and make-up, and nail-bitingly tense in its paranoid scenario. Not only an improvement on the original but Carpenter's best film since Assault on Precinct 13, or to put it another way his last good one. Emphatic freeze-frame fades punctuate and schematise the action, and British Columbian locations stand in convincingly for Antarctica. The film's apocalyptic narrative foreshadowed many a later film, besides recalling Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and each generation provides its own interpretation for the film's 'No one to trust' endgame, from the Red Scare to AIDS to Islamist terrorism.