The solemnity of the frozen wastes contrasts brilliantly with the sweaty paranoia of the men, who are unsure which of their colleagues is next going to erupt with hidden jaws and shooting tendrils.

| Feb 16, 2024

Every October, I revisit John Carpenter’s “The Thing” to celebrate the month of Halloween, and every year I arrive at the same conclusion: it's one of the most effective horror films ever made.

| Sep 28, 2022

Such a pity. John Carpenter is too gifted a moviemaker to let nauseating special effects take over his biggest film, but that's what happened in The Thing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 9, 2021

The Thing is set in an all-male environment, and is as much a study of masculinity in crisis as an update of the sort of siege scenario that Carpenter had already played out in Assault on Precinct 13.

| Oct 23, 2017

The Thing is a peerless masterpiece of relentless suspense, retina-wrecking visual excess and outright, nihilistic terror.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 25, 2011

Carpenter's direction is slow, dark, and stately; he seems to be aiming for an enveloping, novelistic kind of effect, but all he gets is heaviness.

| May 25, 2011

The special effects can't hope to be as creepy to our seen-it-all eyes as they were to the film's first viewers, but we can still enjoy the monster's unique weirdness, and the story is a rock-solid yarn.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 18, 2009

It's pretty scary and entertaining stuff, though I always get the feeling that nothing in it lives up to the tremendous opening section.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 18, 2009

If it's the most vividly guesome monster ever to stalk the screen that audiences crave, then The Thing is the thing. On all other levels, however, John Carpenter's remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 sci-fi classic comes as a letdown.

| Jun 6, 2007

Russell's sub-Eastwood heroics hardly compensate for the absence of all characterisation, while Bill Lancaster's script boasts the most illogical climax any monster movie ever had.

| Jun 24, 2006

The original has been built up to classic scale, but Carpenter's remake is actually far scarier and equally thoughtful.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 5, 2005

The Thing may be a tad too careful and schematic to stand shoulder with Carpenter's very best films.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 30, 2004

Because this material has been done before, and better, especially in the original The Thing and Alien, there's no need to see this version.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 23, 2004

Mr. Carpenter has demonstrated that he can make good, comparatively plain, old-fashioned scare movies and effective suspense thrillers, but he seems to lose his own head when he combines two or more genres, as he [does here].

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 20, 2003