The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, February 17-23
The Thing (1982)
Directed by John Carpenter
Maybe the only study of nihilistic existentialism to feature a gooey disembodied head with spider legs, The Thing is Carpenter’s greatest exploration of a thesis he cemented in Halloween‘s finale: the evil was here before we knew it, and it will never cease. Antarctica’s inability to support life is no obstacle for the titular creature, a shapeless organism that mimics whatever sack of meat it crosses. When it reaches an American research base, the inquiry into who’s infected sends the cast—and the audience—into a paranoid frenzy. The very film is a Thing itself; at the core of this paranoid chum-bucket is a masculinist Western, and Ennio Morricone’s spare, pulsing score emulates Carpenter’s signature synths. Carpenter methodically alternates between the minimal (misdirecting with what little information he provides) to the maximal (an explosion of bodily stuffs accompanies every revelation). It’s no wonder GWAR claims the frosty isle as their motherland. Max Kyburz (February 19, 20, midnight at the Nitehawk)
