John Carpenter's The Thing is probably my favorite movie of all time. It's got all the ingrediants to be great flick. A good story with believable characters. Atomsphere. The perfect ending. Amazing special effects with lots of gore. All these items are thrown together by a master director to create a work of art.
The story is based from Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell. It's about a group of scientists in Antartica who discover an alien being which can replicate any type of DNA. One by one people start being replaced by the thing and turning on each other. The characters (and viewers) dont know who is human and who is not. If the thing is allowed to escape in civilazation, it will quickly take over the world.
The last scene of the movie is great. The camp is burning down. Almost every one is dead. Macready and Childs face off, they haven't seen each other in a while and niether one knows if the other has been replicated. Both men are tired and cold. They sit in the snow and split a bottle of whiskey. The waiting game begins.... It's a tad nihilistic, but perfect. If one of them is an alien, then all they have to do is hold out. They'll freeze and eventually be found, thawed, and the chaos will start once again. If both men are human, then they'll freeze and die thus saving humanity in the process.
This movie is proof that a remake can be done better than the original, if the people in charge of making the movie care enough.
For a far better and in depth discussion on the movie, check out John Kenneth Muir's blog at Reflections on Film and Television
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