This is the third time Keith David has appeared in 11 movies (following They Live and Nope), which is somewhat counter-intuitive because he’s great and horror films, so far, have been largely underwhelming. The Thing (1982) is another big-hitter. It also stars Kurt Russell, is directed by John Carpenter, and occupies #6 and #4 on the TimeOut and Empire lists respectively (placing it only behind Alien and The Shining in high-ranking appearances on both lists).

In 6 hours it will be 100° below in here.

The Thing follows Alien by three years and is very similar, except for one major point: it’s just awful. If you like gore and monsters, it does that well but, as long as you are not ten years old, or have a particularly nervous disposition, you’re not going to have any sleepless nights. In fact, as soon as the film had finished, not only had I forgotten any of the horrific monsters that appeared, I had also forgotten anything that had happened. Perhaps that’s the horror: you can watch nearly 2 hours of this film and have little-to-no recollection of anything that happened. It’s all so banal.

What are the best bits (intentionally-vague slight-spoilers)? The monsters are well-made albeit (as usual) once you’ve seen one, you can’t really be frightened of them.

What are the worst bits? Any attempt at making Antarctic isolation part of the horror is underutilised or otherwise completely ineffective. The acting. Everyone’s reasoning for doing anything. There is no character development sufficient to make us care about the random selection of chumps. So much of what happens is illogical or just nonsense.

What do you mean by illogical? The Antarctic Research station is well-equipped with flamethrowers. The opening text says it is winter, yet there’s a surprising amount of daylight. The Norwegians think that the best way to shoot a dog is to fly as fast as they can past it repeatedly, rather than slowing down to the speed of the dog, or explaining to the people at the US base exactly what’s going on. They also shout in Norwegian, rather than English (which Norwegians learn from grade 1 at school). The choice of ‘leader’ is arbitrary and bad, apparently based on who is the best-known actor in the troupe. Following the sequence where they find out who the threats are, they all go in different directions, immediately invalidating the results. There are loads of other things but I feel like having to write about The Thing is some sort of torture, because it has already taken enough time from me. In short, everything that happens in the film is stupid, illogical and unnecessary.

So is it worth watching? Unless your job is SFX make-up, no. Watch Alien, it is a much, much better film. Apparently The Thing had a higher budget, which one can only assume they spend on Kurt Russell, flamethrowers, helicopters, fake blood and catering.