Scifi of the Day

John Carpenter’s The Thing. The Thing is a terrific horror movie, one of Carpenter’s best, and if you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth a look. In Carpenter’s film (which is a remake of the ‘51 classic, The Thing From Another World; both movies take their inspiration from the John W. Campbell short story “Who Goes There?”), a group of men in a remote Antarctic research station face off against an alien which can mimic their forms exactly. This leads to a lot of paranoia, infighting, and a growing sense of horror at the implications of the threat. If they don’t defeat this creature now, if it makes it out of Antarctica and to more populated area, the human race is doomed. There will be no way to prevent it from absorbing every human being on the planet, at which point it can move on to devouring all remaining life at its leisure.