It's been nearly four decades since its release, but John Carpenter's The Thing still remains
one of the greatest horror films of all time.
As renowned as it is for its creature designs, lead performances and deeply unsettling atmosphere,
it's also famous for its ending - which leaves more than its fair share of unanswered questions.
The film opens with the classic image of a flying saucer barrelling through space toward
Earth.
Much later, we learn that the craft had crashed on our planet in Antarctica - and, according
to Norris, it might have been been buried in the ice for 100,000 years.
That's virtually all we get of the Thing's origin story, and, like so much else in the
film, it poses more questions than it answers.
After all, that ship looked pretty sophisticated, which suggests that it was built by an alien
race of considerable technological skill.
If that's the case, it's entirely possible that more have been built, meaning it's also
possible that other similar ships made their way to Earth at some point or another.
Have any of them crashed, or even landed?
Is there a whole fleet out there, just waiting for a sign that there’s life on our planet?
Or was the ship's crash landing the result of a hideous alien hijacking?
It's impossible to tell for sure, but the presence of that ship hangs over the whole
movie.
“It could have imitated a million life forms on a million planets.
It could change into any one of them at any time.
Now it wants life-forms on Earth.”
Even if it had been in some kind of stasis, the alien spacecraft which contained the Thing
had been present on our planet for millennia, but even with all of that time on Earth, the
movie doesn’t give us the creature’s entire history, either.
It's possible that all this has happened before, either with another spacecraft, or with the
same spacecraft encountered by other people.
A lot has changed in 100,000 years, and the spacecraft may not have always been completely
buried in the ice.
What if there’s alien DNA out in the world right now, spread by somebody who encountered
it many years ago?
Part of the film’s effectiveness comes from the fact that it leaves those questions unanswered,
and dials up the paranoia over just what the Thing is and what it can do.
But what we do know is that it can infiltrate mankind and assimilate seamlessly if it wants
to - so who's to say it hasn't already?
As the paranoia over who might be infected by the Thing sets in, the men of the station
quickly begin to turn on each other.
This conflict hits a fever pitch when Nauls tries to leave MacReady out in the storm after
finding his torn jacket outside - which suggests that he may have been attacked at some point.
“Childs, what if we’re wrong about him?!”
“Well then we’re wrong!”
MacReady eventually makes his way back inside and ultimately takes command of the survivors,
but this seemingly vital plot point is quickly forgotten.
Is there a logical reason for it to have been there?
Is it really proof that Mac was already assimilated, and that the organisms controlling him are
just really good at hiding it - or is something else going on?
The film never answers that question, but it does feed into the famous final scene in
a major way.
The film’s iconic blood test sequence raises another interesting question about the nature
of the Thing.
Palmer is the one who turns out to be infected, and we see his blood basically jump out of
its petri dish when confronted with a hot wire.
We also know that the Thing will divide into different parts that will act independently
if they need to, and that it can infect people on a microbiotic level.
Does all of this mean that infected blood can in some way act, or at least survive,
on its own?
There's no short supply of blood scattered throughout the film, both in the Norwegian
station and among the Americans.
If it's somehow able to retain the alien organism within it, it could at the very least survive
out in the cold.
If it's able to transfer itself to other tissue it comes into contact with, it could do even
more than that.
Fire can destroy most things, but it can't eliminate every last drop of blood.
The Thing’s ending is famously ambiguous.
After destroying the station, MacReady stumbles outside with a bottle of scotch in hand to
find Childs returning, claiming his absence from the final struggle was because he had
left to look for Blair.
“If you’re worried about me-”
“If we’ve got any surprises for each other, I don’t think we’re in much shape to do
anything about it.”
This moment has led to a number of fan theories hypothesizing which of the two men might be
infected.
It could be either Mac or Childs - or even both.
“Why don’t we just wait here for a little while.
See what happens.”
Some fans claim Mac's bottle isn't filled with Scotch, but gasoline, and that he tricked
Childs into proving he isn't human by making him drink it.
Others believe that his little smile at the end could mean that Mac is the Thing.
The closest thing to a definitive answer may have come from cinematographer Dean Cundey,
who said he and Carpenter used eye light earlier in the film to suggest who was human and who
wasn't.
If you look closely, that could well mean it’s likely that the Thing is living in
Childs.
Whether it’s Childs or MacReady, there’s a strong implication at the end of the film
that at least one of the two men remains infected by the Thing - which suggests that the alien’s
story is far from over.
So what happens now?
If only one of them is the Thing, it's quite likely it will eventually assimilate the other
human body.
Could the Thing then hold out long enough to wait for help?
Could they feign death and eventually assimilate other, healthier humans?
Could they even let the ice reclaim them and return to the same kind of stasis from which
the Thing apparently came?
Whatever the case may be, this story clearly doesn’t end with Childs and MacReady - and
the version of Earth the film depicts could well be doomed.
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