Number Fifteen: The Thing

On Saturday night, I spent the evening in bed, eating soup, watching John Carpeter's The Thing. Mostly suspense with a little bit of gross alien, I really enjoyed this movie. The film deserves another viewing, as I was exhausted with a cold and dozed off a couple times, but I pretty much got the gist of it, which is that it's good.

The movie takes place on Antarctica, where Kurt Russell and some other people are working in a base camp. They have a helicopter and dogs for a dog sled, and their neighbors are some Norwegians. The beginning of the movie sees some Norwegians in their helicopter hunting a dog. When they can't shoot it from above, they land and chase it on foot and come upon the American's camp. The Americans naturally freak out, shoot back, and the Norwegians are killed. The dog is saved! No one knows why they were shooting at the poor dog.

Well, it turns out there's an alien shape shifter running around that can take the form of whatever it has killed and mimic it perfectly. The crew checks out the Norwegians camp and discovers no survivors. As crew members disappear and are alone for enough periods of time to possibly have become the shape shifter, no one can be trusted and all members must fight for their own survival.

*SPOILER ALERT* I think what I liked best about this movie is the ending- no one is saved. We are left with only two people remaining, and we have no idea what will happen to them. We are pretty much positive that Kurt Russell is not the alien, but we really don't know about the other character, but it won't really help if Kurt kills him, as he'll still be trapped in the Antarctic. There is no relief.

For your enjoyment: one of the creatures that the Thing becomes. It has no shape itself, but whatever it kills/infects/takes over will become "the thing" and can then kill again. You can buy this beauty for your own collection!