The Thing

(John Carpenter, US 1982, 109 min., DCP)

Kurt Russell stars in director John Carpenter’s slick, smart, scary, and gory updating of Howard Hawks’s 1950s sci-fi classic. The arctic setting remains the same, but this time, the alien visitor knows where to hide: inside the human body. Rob Bottin’s make-up effects have to be seen to be believed. The backdrop of the frozen wasteland, filmed in the Tongass National Forest and other locations in Alaska, provides the audience with the feeling of isolation and the encroaching fear of surviving without the much-needed help of others.