'The Thing' is the Only Good Thing to Happen to Gore
kino.club #1
When you think gore, what comes to mind? Blood, guts and the occasional flailing intestine, perhaps; a re-adapted medieval dentist’s torture instrument and at least one chainsaw.
Google indicates a whole platter of variety: Popular splatter, it offers; suspenseful splatter; indie splatter. What marvellous use of alliteration! It’s a shame that few films featured in the list (Saw; The Terrifier; Texas Chainsaw; and their numerous spinoffs and sequels) are any good – sorry, horror stans.
So-called ‘decade-defining’ horror tends to be either plain bad or a scapegoat for the problematic. Polanski’s Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, for instance, toy with daring cinematography and attractively original premises – but can only be enjoyed if one overlooks the blindingly jarring misogyny upon which all of its virtues turn (the artist’s art, after all). I’m not trying to claim that horror cannot be good – it certainly can – and there are a handful of wonderful horror movies out there. My point is more that bad acting, samey visuals and plot holes have become expected staples of the genre. ‘Slashers’ or ‘splatters’, particularly in recent years, rely on our increasing numbness to violence, bombarding the audience with a plotless sequence of CGI-generated ripping flesh. Let’s be honest: rarely does a horror film actually impress us.
The Thing, however, is brilliant. It is Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None meets eloquently sculpted slimy alien, set in on a remote Antarctica base in the midst of a heavy storm. Our monster is parasitic upon the living cells of other creatures, manifesting first as a wolf and then as the very members of the crew we are introduced to in the first few minutes.
And thus, John Carpenter succeeds in frightening us just like his classic predecessors - using ketchup. Brilliantly sculpted practical effects by prodigy Rob Bottin certainly help, too. They multiply, explode, transform and grow massive fangs to chow down on characters’ arms; they fascinate, horrify and astound.
I couldn’t look away. As the head of one of the ‘infected’ characters melts off of his body in a string of waxy skin and organs, another sprouts bouquets of antennae and furry spider legs. The best horror is the one that, as Roger Munier’s early essay on film states, allows us to witness “the world […] in its pure state, in the pure projection of its essence, beyond all prehension”. Good horror tricks us into uncovering and confronting, like Hamlet, our unfinished qualms with the world - the symptoms of our malaise.
The genius Thing is a monster not clearly defined. Characters begin suspecting each other and themselves, trembling, with us, through a series of red herrings. It serves as a reminder that sometimes, we need a reminder. Of what truly makes us shiver. Of the fact that what most of us are really afraid of isn’t some blood and a guy in a mask appearing at our doorstep, but that that guy has been sleeping in our bed the whole time – or that we have been wearing it all along. In a sense, after all, we are all perfect Aristotelian imitators. In a dark meditation on our own relationship to one another, and ourselves, The Thing asks the question we often, I think, try to ignore (even when it tickles us from within) – what if I’m the imposter?
What makes us tremble is anything but otherworldly – the alien slime, flamethrowers and Hydra-like ulcers of dog’s skulls serve only to reaffirm.
All of this to say: I am not one for gore, usually, ever. The Thing impressed me – I hope you will feel the same. If you’ve never seen it – watch it. If you’ve seen it before – watch it again. I guarantee that, in spite of yourself, you will love it.
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