kaliwali
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The Thing (1982) | Full Watch Along
🕑 Added 2025-10-05 17:33:00 +0000 UTCFirst off, huge applause to you all for picking this in the Patreon Poll for our Horror/Mystery genre. I'm reminding myself right now that I need to get the Comedy/Horror Poll up to you all later today lol. Out of everything on that Horror/Mystery list this felt like the most perfect fit since we have really been on this Sci-Fi kick with Alien, Aliens, Venom, and Andor lately! So, when I saw that UFO zoom by in the beginning of The Thing, I instantly grinned. I just knew you all had picked another spooky sci-fi ride, and I honestly love you all for that!
Alright so... The Thing. Wow. 😹 I knew it was going to be intense just based on the comments here and on YouTube, but this? I actually had nightmares about hahaha. I think what really got to me was the gore factor and that constant paranoia of who could be The Thing. You never knew who you could really trust, and the tension just kept building the whole time! But the blood test scene? Absolute genius under pressure. I loved the way they came up with elaborate methods to figure out who was still human and it definitely had me on the edge of my seat the whole time.
And that ending... Are they both human? Are they both The Thing? Is one of them The Thing? I started learning toward Childs being The Thing (which, side note, is a young Keith David! I didn't even realize until I checked out the cast afterwards). But if it was Childs, maybe that's why McReady was laughing? Like, he knew it was over for him, and he was sharing that last drink with the monster that won. But then again, how could he be sure? My main reasoning for it being Childs is because he was gone an awfully long time..
Yet I still don't know.. And that is what makes this film so brilliant! I'd love to hear your thoughts on who you thought was The Thing or how the ending played out for you. I'm honestly still spiraling over it. I had to google if John Carpenter ever explained the ending and turns out, he never has. Which makes it all even more brilliant. I just picture him somewhere, eating popcorn and scrollign through endless debates online, being the only person alive who actually knows the truth. Thank you all for picking this one! I think the fact that I've been following 3I/Atlas news hasn't help my nightmares lately with this one now in my brain 😅 But I seriously enjoyed it!
Thank you for your support on Patreon!
Relax and enjoy 🍿🌿
LINK: https://youtu.be/X1XXBWxAA9I
I watched this on Amazon Prime (Rented)
Comments
Kali Wali
A few others mentioned this here! Very interesting..
Brad
You couldn't see Childs' breath. Only Macready's. Unless that was an accident and we're just not supposed to know.
pinkdino99
Oh and for more Keith David and John Carpenter AND sci-fi try They Live !
pinkdino99
Well done. This is easily considered widely among both critics and fans to be the best horror movie ever made. I had a copy on VHS as a 13 yr old kid, and got as far as the dog scene before "NOPE"-ing out. Some fun facts... this was made by John Carpenter whom invented the slasher genre with Halloween (should be on your list), and worked with Kurt again on cult classics the thriller Escape From New York and comedy action movie Big Trouble in Little China. Carpenter was an expert at making great movies on a shoe-string budget. The FX were from a young maestro called Rob Bottin. Bottin was struggling under the load, so Stan Winston who did the Terminator FX did the dog scene (which is actually a puppet !) As to the ending, after initial screenings fans mobbed Carpenter asking for a resolution. He told them that it was up to them to decide, and they all yelled "OH I HATE THAT !!!" There is a recently made prequel (which is all bang and no tension) which had an interesting revelation. The Thing can not replicate metal, so that team's test involved looking at teeth. If you had fillings, you were human ! At the end of our movie Childs has an earring, so by the future film's logic, he was OK. This movie is a part of Carpenter's unofficial Apocalypse trilogy (along with the underrated Prince of Darkness and the brilliant Mouth of Madness). In each of these movies it is GAME OVER for humanity from the first reel. No matter what anyone does, a rescue team will come and be infected by trace organisms, and humanity is doomed. One more Carpenter movie that I think you'd love is called The Fog. A creepy ghost story with Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween) and her mum Janet Leigh (Psycho). If you are doing 80s Carpenter, you can't go wrong. His films went severely downhill in the 90s though. As with all horror remember this mantra... "It's only a movie !" What's that behind you !?!
