John Carpenter's The Thing

John Carpenter's The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) - B+

Like most of Carpenter's best, a triumph of truly unpleasant practical effects, and in fact an excellent case study in what works and what doesn't about the top-notch computer effects you see in today's sci-fi and horror. The make-up, goo and puppetry on display here is both more and less real than the CGI stuff: more real because it's an actual physical presence, and less real because it's so limited in its movement. But it serves for what Carpenter is trying to do, which is freak you out in short bursts; he doesn't try to make you jump, but there are moments here of the sort of visceral and immediate horror that's hard to come by in the movies, moments where you feel yourself in the shoes of the character watching this horrible, disgusting alien abomination unveil itself, and holy shit can you imagine seeing that in real life? Quintessential Carpenter in other ways too, not all of them positive: the drab and ugly look, the somewhat interchangeable characters, the abundance of soft testosterone (his characters are macho in kind of a gentle way, though maybe that's just the 80's mentality generally); even Ennio Morricone is aping the synthy, pulsating scores Carpenter wrote for his other films. Very effective but not transcendent; I actually think the opening shot of the flying saucer spoils some of the fun, since as an alien invasion movie it's pretty unimaginative (they traveled light years to bury themselves in the ice for millenia and then spray people with goo?), while as horror it's awesome.